In this set of podcasts Professor Mark Ormrod of the University of York, Dr Alex Woolf, Dr Katie Stevenson & Professor Michael Brown of the University of St Andrews look at some key aspects of medieval Scottish history.

In this HA Podcast Series Professor Joanna Story of the University of Leicester looks at the history of the Anglo-Saxons.

An HA Podcasted History of the Crusades featuring Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Professor Jonathan Phillips of Royal Holloway, University of London and Dr Tom Asbridge of Queen Mary, University of London.

How can a war last 100 years? What did this mean for the peoples of England and France during the medieval period?  How significant were the battles of Poitiers, Crecy and Agincourt? In this podcast series the 100 Years War is explained, explored and brought to life. The lists of...

An HA Podcasted History of the Vikings featuring Professor Rosamond McKitterick, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge.

An HA Podcasted History featuring Professor David Bates and Professor Nicholas Vincent of the University of East Anglia, Dr Philip Morgan of Keele University, Professor Mark Ormrod of the University of York, Dr James Davis of Queens University Belfast, Professor Michael Hicks of the University of Winchester, Dr Sean Cunningham of...

Professor Anne Curry delivered her final Presidential lecture at the Historical Association Annual Conference 2011 in Manchester. Henry VI (1422-61) was England's youngest king, only nine months old when he succeeded his famous father. Traditionally he is seen as incompetent, pious and, latterly, insane, and thereby causing the Wars of...

Why Medieval History Matters, Professor Anne Curry, President of the HA ‘I don't mind there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but there is no reason for the state to pay for them'. So, allegedly, said Charles Clarke when Education Secretary in 2003. In fact, medieval history has never...

In the winter of 1235-6, Eleanor, the 12 year old daughter of Count Raymond-Berengar V of Provence and Beatrice of Savoy, left her native homeland. She travelled to England to marry King Henry III, a man 28 years her senior whom she had never met. The bride and her entourage...

This lecture with Adrian Bell, Helen Lacey and Helen Killick introduces key findings of the AHRC-funded project The People of 1381. Which people and social groups were involved in England’s biggest pre-civil war revolt? How much can we find out about their lives: where did they come from, what actions...

Richard III is one of the most famous kings of England, as much for his Shakespearean mythology as for the reality of his reign. Here, the different accounts of him are explored to shed light on some of his actions and legacy. The fascination evoked by Richard III and the...

Jack Cunningham considers a medieval philosopher, the significance of whose ideas has grown in importance through the centuries. An appreciation of Grosseteste the thinker has not always been at its appropriate level during the almost 800 years since his death. If historians have paid attention to the great man this ...

It is almost a commonplace that there is an affinity between a holy man and the creatures of the wild. The archetype is St. Francis of Assisi but the phenomenon was well marked both before and after his time. I would like to consider briefly an episode in the life...

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, the Annual Register remarked that the feeling of forlorn-ness which swept the country had no parallel since the death of King Alfred. The men of the new century were driven to seek a Saxon parallel. So too were men at the beginning of the...

(Historical Association Pamphlet, No. 124, 1942) Dunlop's research into the occupations and attitudes of Scots abroad during the 15th century uncovers some surprising revelations about all members of the Scottish ex-pat society. She particularly notes the ‘scurrilous' opinions of the French regarding Scotsmen's behaviour. While Scottish diplomatists and envoys tended...

On the north-western side of the City of London, directly in front of St Bartholomew's Hospital near the ancient church of St Bartholomew the Great, there once lay a ‘smooth field', now known as Smithfield. This open space of around ten acres had a long and turbulent history. In medieval...

Marie Paterson discovered this historical and spiritual structure many years ago and it continues to affect her. In Essex, on the northern shore of the Dengie Hundred, overlooking the mouth of the Blackwater estuary, proudly stands the lonely Saxon chapel of St Peter’s-on-the-Wall. Erected on the site of the Roman...

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

This article looks at the importance of long distance connections between the English kingdoms and the eastern Mediterranean in the sixth to eighth centuries. The relationship between the ship burial at Sutton Hoo – in the eastern English county of Suffolk – the people who discovered and excavated it, and what...

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.