Æthelstan was the early medieval king whose territorial conquests and shrewd statesmanship united the peoples, languages, and cultures that would come to be known as the 'Kingdom of the English.' In this panoramic talk, David Woodman draws on his research and recent book to create a portrait of this immensely...

March is Women’s History Month, which conveniently overlaps with International Women’s Day (IWD). This year’s IWD has the theme 'Give to Gain', emphasising that providing resources and opportunities to women and girls benefits everyone: ‘When women thrive, we all rise’. Where has this message come from? From the real-life experiences of women over generations, which is of...

February is LGBTQ+ History Month and the Historical Association has spent a number of years ensuring that the ways in which the past has recorded and represented these communities has been included in our general output. A key issue of presenting the work of historians who are investigating this history...

Steve Tibble discusses the Assassins and Templars, two of history's most legendary groups. One was a Shi’ite religious sect, the other a Christian military order created to defend the Holy Land. Steve Tibble traces the history of these two groups from their origins to their ultimate destruction showing how they survived only by perfecting...

It is over twenty years since Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) was introduced in the UK. The purpose was to have one day where all the elements of the horror of the Holocaust (the Nazi Genocide against the Jews of Europe and the Gypsies, Roma and Sinti) and the Nazi Persecution...

New year – a new set of historical events to understand and learn about. Coming up for 2026 are some exciting anniversaries including some on technology – telephones in particular; important books and authors – see Paddington and Beatrix Potter; musical births – time for the jazz hands; protest and...

From mid-November until mid-December it is Disability History Month (20 November–20 December). It might seem odd to have the ‘month’ straddling two months rather than being one single calendar month, but actually it makes rather good symbolic sense. It starts a few days after Remembrance Day and goes into December,...

When the generation of men and women first adopted the wearing of a poppy in the aftermath of the First World War they were doing so for many reasons. For some veterans the poppy had been a symbol of new life on the battlefield, while the inclusion of a pressed...