When Bernard of Clairvaux died in 1153, the Cistercian Order was faced with a problem. The self-proclaimed ‘chimera of his age’ had enjoyed an unusual and varied monastic career, as abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux and papal confidante, making him remarkably well-known for a monk. At the funeral the...

Ongoing interdisciplinary developments have cast light on the surprisingly sophisticated world of Viking-age and medieval Scandinavian law and its wide-ranging influence in these societies. In many ways, the Viking Age and its inhabitants are more familiar than ever before. From video games to television and films, new narrative frontiers and bigger...

History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles For centuries the only way the written word could be communicated was by it being...

The art of landscape spotting – identifying and interpreting visible archaeological features in the countryside – is an accessible, enlightening and fun way to explore our past. By finding these clues in the fields, roads, hedges and hills around us, we can start to piece together the biography of a...

Tim Lomas explores some documents from the Bishop and Priory of Durham that shed interesting light on the lives of ‘ordinary people’ in medieval England. It is largely a truism to state that the majority of documents from medieval Britain were not designed to shed much light on the lives...

This ‘aide memoire’ to Chester’s local history has been prepared to enable 2019 Annual Conference delegates – and other visitors – to gain a ‘flavour’ of what Chester has to offer.  A visitor to Chester encounters the bustle and excitement of a busy cathedral city but behind this façade lies...

Richard Stone explains that the natural landscape can be a resource for anyone exploring local topography. The idea for researching this topic came while reading Oliver Rackham’s excellent Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape. Calculations based on woodland recorded in Domesday Book revealed my home county of Staffordshire, with...

Trevor James raises the prospect of broadening our approaches to local history to take a wider European perspective. When Professor W. G. Hoskins published his The Making of the English Landscape in 1955, he taught us how to observe and understand the topography of our landscapes, urban and rural, and...

Sean Connolly illustrates how Tudor dreams of a reformed Ireland were not realised – instead tensions between Irish magnates and the English Crown often erupted into violence.

Kate Ash-Irisarri shows how three redoubtable women had significant roles in the difficult and dangerous period of the Scottish Wars of Independence.

Trevor James has been researching the ‘saintly landscape’ for over 40 years. Here is a glimpse of what he has identified.

Bethan M. Jenkins considers why it was important to Lewis Morris and others to have the distinctive Welsh contribution to British history and culture properly acknowledged.

Tom Pickles explores Ryedale in Yorkshire, where an extraordinary network of churches bears witness to the social, political, and religious transformations of the Anglo-Saxon period.

New research at a royal palace site close to Sutton Hoo poses fresh questions about the nature of the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Christopher Scull and Tom Williamson look at how landscape studies can change our understanding of early English royal rule.

Many fascinating individuals appear in the British Library’s Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition – Bede, Alfred, Canute, Emma, William the Conqueror – but one deserves to be much better known, especially in this her anniversary year: one of the most important women in British history, hers is a classic case of the...

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.

Elite Anglo-Saxon women played a powerful role in the religious affairs and politics of their day and were important patrons of learning and culture.

The eighth-century monk is renowned as the ‘Father of English History’, but recent scholarship has demonstrated how important he was as a scientist and theologian and how his writings on the Bible can illuminate his famous history.

Stunning archaeological discoveries have shed new light on the reign of Alfred the Great and his struggles with the Vikings, revealing the might of the Viking armies and the international connections of his kingdom.