Stephen M. Cullen draws out the influences and events that shaped one of Britain’s most significant fascist organisers and leaders.

Norma Clarke and Helen Weinstein consider new approaches to the presentation of women writers on BBC radio. 'True it is, Spinning with the Fingers, is more proper to our Sex than Studying or Writing Poetry, which is Spinning with the Brain; but, having no skill in the art of the...

Khadija Tauseef introduces the first of four successive sultanahs of Aceh during the seventeenth century. As the sun sets on the glorious reign of Queen Elizabeth II, we pause and look back at the many queens that have contributed greatly to our historical heritage. While female sovereigns in Islamic kingdoms were a...

For their meeting in September 2017 the Bolton Branch requested a talk on Renaissance Italy. What they heard dealt with the Italian portion of the Borgia family, led by Pope Alexander VI, though the topicality of Catalan nationalism meant that the principal figures were introduced with comment on the Italian,...

5 Editorial 6 Queenship in Medieval England: A Changing Dynamic? - Louise Wilkinson (Read article) 12 Petticoat Politicians: Women and the Politics of the Parish in England - Sarah Richardson (Read article) 17 The President's Column 18 Strange Journey: the life of Dorothy Eckersley - Stephen M. Cullen (Read Article)...

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...

In this article Matthew Taylor explores the history of women’s boxing in Britain from the early eighteenth century onwards, showing how prevailing gender norms have led to this activity being marginalised by historians. It is argued that the key women boxers he discusses should be celebrated as key figures, not just in the history of sport but...

Gregory Gifford investigates the cultural issues raised by the sixteenth century‘s reigning queens. In 1877 when Sitting Bull led his Lakota people across the border into Canada, he told them they were entering ‘The land of The Grandmother’ – a wonderful phrase to express Queen Victoria’s matriarchal authority. Three hundred years earlier...

Historical research takes place in many forms and in many locations. This research, which has been translated for us, introduces us to an heroic pioneering Ukrainian woman surgeon. During the Spring of 1932 in the Ukrainian city of Kiev, on a sunny day in March, a very small group of...

This classic pamphlet takes you through the Votes for Women in Britain movement from its origins to its eventual success, following the case for women's suffrage presented, tactics and strategies, the anti-suffragist argument, party political complications, international perspectives, the Pankhursts and militancy, the revival of non-militant suffragism, the impact of...

An HA Public History Podcast featuring Dr Andrew Foster and Dr Caroline Bowden discussing the project: Who were the Nuns? A Prosopographical study of the English Convents in exile 1600-1800. 'Who were the Nuns?' is a funded project at Queen Mary, Universty of London that has been making a comprehensive study of...

Luke Rimmo Loyi Lego explores the role of women in the French Revolution, and how their challenges to traditional gender roles laid the foundations for the modern feminist movement.  The study of the French Revolution is often restricted to its impact on the Enlightenment ideas of influential men such as Rousseau,...

Petticoat Politicians: Women and the Politics of the Parish in England The history of women voting in Britain is familiar to many. 2013 marked the centenary of the zenith of the militant female suffrage movement, culminating in the tragic death of Emily Wilding Davison, crushed by the King's horse at...

With the final closure of Britain’s deep coal mines, Chris Wrigley examines the long-standing involvement of women in and around this challenging and dangerous form of work. With the closure in 2015 of Thoresby and Kellingley mines, the last two working deep coal mines in Britain, leaving only open-cast coal...

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Bristol was one of England's greatest towns, with a population of perhaps 100,000 after the Black Death of 1348. Its status was recognised in 1373, with its creation as the realm's first provincial urban county, but only in 1542, with the creation of the...

On the surface, the period 1914 to 1945 seems to have encompassed massive changes in the position of women in Europe, in response to the demands of war and revolution. Yet historians have questioned the extent of the transformation, since the acquisition of the vote, as well as improvements in...

To booke and pen: Women, education and literacy in Tudor and Stuart England As a student in the early 1970s, I became acutely aware that formal provision for women's education was a relatively recent development. I was at Bedford College, which originated in 1849 as the first higher education institution...

Rowan Cookson offers us the opportunity to compare our contemporary anxieties with a stressful era in American history. Eighteenth-century women’s friendship is worth considering at this time. In my undergraduate dissertation, I concluded that white wealthy women’s friendship in eighteenth-century America equired long distance communication, involved labour and perpetuated race and class...

In this article Matthew Brown and Pablo Scharagrodsky introduce us to the little-known story of Anglo-Argentinian swimmer Lilian Harrison, who in 1923 became the first person to swim the 42km from Uruguay to Argentina at the estuary of the Rio de la Plata. Her story shows how she had to battle against not only tides and...