Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule, Katherine Pangonis, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2021, 250p, £20-00. ISBN 978-1-4746-1407-8. For many historians Outremer was the destination of the Crusades and our focus has been on what happened to the crusaders, both on their journeys and in their struggles at that...

Medieval historian Dr Claire Kennan continued our Virtual Branch series with a local history talk on the building of St James's spire, Louth.  In her talk Kennan traces the important role that Louth's major guilds of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Holy Trinity played in the building of the St James’s spire. Throughout the...

Wakefield Bridge Chapel, by the River Calder, is thought by many to be the finest of four bridge chantries, the others being Bradford-on-Avon, Derby and Rotherham. The chapel at Wakefield was originally founded and endowed by the people of Wakefield and district between 1342 and 1359. In 1397 Edmund de Langley,...

Approximately 10 miles east of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and just over 10 minutes walk from my home, the imposing ruins of Tynemouth Priory command sea, river, and land from the promontory between King Edward’s Bay and Prior’s Haven. While the Priory dates back to the eleventh century, the headland on which it sits,...

Field-Marshal Montgomery has a reputation as a strong-willed battle-hardened leader, with a touch of the impetuous. Few know of his charitable side and yet in his later years this side was just as important to his activities. In this article we find out a bit more of this often simplistically...

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. Think Horrible Histories for grownups (without the songs and music). See all History Abridged articles The Acropolis of Athens is...

Eleri Cousins explores the dynamics of Romano-British religion at the sanctuary at Bath. What do you think of when you think of Roman Bath?  Most of us probably think of, well, the Baths – in particular the iconic image of the Great Bath, with its Roman swimming basin and its...

Trevor James introduces the extraordinary archaeological remains from Greek and Roman occupation to be found at Paestum. Paestum is the more recent name of a location originally known as Poseidonia, named in honour of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. Poseidonia was a Greek settlement or colony on the west...

Paula Kitching tells us of the incredible courage shown by Fatima Baraghani while campaigning for human rights, especially women’s rights in nineteenth century Persia. Fatima Baraghani lived in nineteenth century Persia and was a poet, a religious leader and a campaigner for women’s rights. She was born sometime between 1814 and 1919,...

Joyce Tyldesley explains the significant but often hidden roles played by queens in Ancient Egypt.   For almost 3,000 years – from the unification of the land in 3100 BC to the arrival of Alexander the Great in 332 BC – the king (or pharaoh) of Egypt served as an essential...

Michael Wood opened the summer lecture series for the HA virtual Branch on the Making of Early England. In it he introduced key characters and texts that help to establish the cultural past of that time and also reveal to us what we know of it. These people included overlooked...

On the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims in New England on the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock explores the reasons for migration to the New World in 1620 and later, and the significance of those migrants, both at the time and their impact on the evolution of the USA...

In this film Dr Anna Whitelock from Royal Holloway, University of London, discusses the life of Mary I, the first crowned Queen of England. Dr Whitelock looks at Mary's difficult early life, her submission to Henry VIII and the rise of a warrior princess. Dr Whitelock explores Mary as a courageous...

In this film Professor Sue Doran, Jesus College, University of Oxford and Professor Steven Gunn, Merton College, University of Oxford, look at the role religion played in defining the reigns and authority of the Tudor monarchs. If you're unable to see the film below, please use the link for your Membership type:Historian...

In this film, Professor Sue Doran, Jesus College, University of Oxford, looks at the two main challenges to Elizabeth I's authority: gender and religion. Professor Doran looks at the power of Elizabeth's personality, her relationship with her advisers plus the significance of religion and domestics politics to shaping her reign and...

Fiona Edmonds evidences the enduring links between Brittany and Britain throughout the early Middle Ages. Every year many thousands of British holidaymakers travel to Brittany in search of beaches, bisque and bonhomie. As they board the ferry, they may notice that they are travelling from one Bretagne to another. The names...

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...

The recent attacks on Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery have added impetus to the public debate about how we memorialise the dead and the public and private costs of mourning.

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...

Jim McBride looks at the growing demand for equal civil rights for the Catholic population of Northern Ireland through the 1960s, which led to the resignation of Terence O’Neill in 1969.