Peter Stanley is working on the largely unexplored history of the thousands of British Territorial soldiers who served in India during the First World War using their letters and diaries. He is trying to discover what happened to these men when they returned to Britain. Did their service in India...

Indisputably, the United States of America has been and continues to be the leading power of the twentieth century. No country or people, however large or small, has been immune from American influence. A succession of American presidents have become international celebrities whose personal strengths and weaknesses are discussed and disssected...

The riches of surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts showcased in a fabulous new exhibition at the British Library emphasises the essential interconnections between England and the Continent.

The Second World War is no longer a recent war. Very soon, there will be no veterans left to tell us how they saw things and what it was really like for them. While some eyewitnesses who were children at the time might be with us to see the centenary...

In the light of present-day concerns about the place, in a modern world, of statues commemorating figures whose roles in history are of debatable merit, Dr Gregory Gifford puts the British Empire on trial, presenting a balanced case both for and against. In June 2020 when the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston...

This resource is a pamphlet titled ‘The Byzantine Empire on the Eve of the Crusades’ and written by R. J. H. Jenkins in 1953. As such, some of the scholarship has been updated since then, although it can provide useful historiography. It is not strange that there should in recent...

I. The Legacy of Versailles The Outbreak of a second world war on 1 September 1939 might have been expected to produce in due course a great controversy on ‘war guilt'. But there has been nothing comparable with the debate which took place during the 1920s on the 1914 issues. The...

The Duchy of Courland’s attempts to establish outposts in the Caribbean and Africa were not the only Baltic ventures across the Atlantic during the seventeenth century. However, the expeditions of the small vassal dukedom were possibly the most unlikely. The article introduces the motivations behind the Couronian colonial project, as...

Daniel Steinbach asks why the loss of the German colonies in Africa was perceived as a powerful symbol of Germany’s deliberate humiliation at the end of the First World War. Famously, Germany’s first and last shots of the First World War were fired in Africa. From its beginning to its...

Nine centuries after enthusiasm for pope Urban's expedition to Jerusalem swept western Europe the phenomenon of the first crusade continues to fascinate. This pamphlet examines the nature of the crusades and the motives of those who joined it, describes the hardships of the long journey to the Holy Land and...

As Christianity had spread across Europe, Islam had spread across the Middle East. At the end of the eleventh century the relationship between the Muslim leader of Jerusalem and the Christian communities and travellers to the city fractured. Along with other key relationships across Europe, the Middle East and around...

Dave Martin investigates why there is a war memorial for German soldiers, ‘buried in a foreign field’, in a Dorset churchyard.

This pamphlet covers a very large period of history in a very important region with great detail and focus. Themes that are covered include the transition of power and dominance in the pacific region, the conflicts that frequently arose in the struggle for pacific dominance throughout the centuries, as well...

4 Reviews 5 Editorial 6 The Battle of Waterloo: Sunday 18 June 1815 - John Morewood (Read Article) 13 News from 59a 14 Scum of the earth - or fine fellows? The British soldier in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars - Carole Divall (Read Article) 19 The President's Column 20 Medical...

4 Reviews 5 Editorial 6 A precious jewel: English Calais, 1347-1558 - Dan Spencer (Read article) 11 The President's Column 12 Britain: the regional battlefields that helped to create a nation - Geoffrey Carter (Read article) 17 St Peter's-ad-murum, Bradwelljuxta-Mare - Marie Paterson (Read article) 18 The Sykes-Picot agreement and lines...

4 Reviews 5 Editorial 6 Battle of the Somme: the making of the 1916 propaganda film - Taylor Downing (Read article) 12 MOOCs and the Middle Ages: England in the time of King Richard III - Deirdre O’Sullivan (Read article) 18 Earth in vision: pathfinding in the BBC’s archive of...

5 Editorial (Read article) 6 Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy – Nicolas Kinloch (Read article) 11 Letters 12 Anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War – Kit Kowol (Read article) 17 The portrayal of historians in fiction: people on the edge? – Michael Bender (Read article) 22 Doomed to...

As well as being admired for their aesthetic beauty, medieval and early modern tapestries often conveyed deeper symbolic meanings. Here Damien Dessane examines a famous sixteenth century tapestry and reveals the insights it provides into Anglo-French relations in that period and into the increasing agency of some important women...

The Spirit of Normandy Trust Essay Competition is aimed at young historians and organised by the Historical Association (as part of the annual Young Historian Awards). The 2023 winner in the Key Stage 3 (lower secondary school) category is Ayan Sinha, a pupil at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield. In this abridged...

Imperial ambitions during the First World War extended beyond the Middle East and Africa.  In this article Ben Markham looks at the territorial wrangling over Greenland. It is well known that the British Empire grew in size significantly in the wake of the First World War. In the course of...