In this podcast Dr Gabriele Neher of the University of Nottingham provides an introduction to the Renaissance.

An HA Podcasted History of the Spanish Golden Age featuring Dr Glyn Redworth of Manchester University and Dr Francois Soyer of the University of Southampton.

In this podcast Dr Ursula Rothe & Dr Colin Andrews of the Open University discuss how social, moral and religious life in Rome differed from that of ancient Greece.

In this podcast Dr Fiona Hobden of the University of Liverpool discusses what Greek tragedy and comedy tell us about the society of Ancient Greece and what has been the legacy of the great writers of this period.

In this podcast Professor Penelope Corfield looks at the history of 'End of the World Cults'.  1. Why do people at times become urgently convinced that 'the End of the World is Nigh?' HA Members can listen to the full podcast here Short Reading list for End-of-the-World Cults: Two wide-ranging introductions:...

In this podcast Dr Joanna Paul & Dr Paula James of the Open University discuss the role and significance of the Latin Poets in Roman society.

Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' investigates World War...

Polychronicon is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition focuses on the interpretations of popular music.

Over the past two decades the historiography of the Great War has witnessed something of a revolution. Although historical revisionism is, of course, nothing out of the ordinary, the speed with which long-held assumptions about the First World War and its impact have been swept away has been quite astonishing....

‘The Beatles were history-makers from the start,' proclaimed the liner notes for the band's first LP in March 1963. It was a bold claim to make on behalf of a beat combo with one charttopping single, but the Beatles' subsequent impact on 1960s culture put their historical importance (if not...

Controversial from the first year of its release in 1915, 'The Birth of a Nation' has been hailed as both the greatest film ever made and the most racist. On 8 February 1915, it premiered in Los Angeles as 'The Clansman', the name of the novel and play upon which...

Few sub-fields of American history have undergone as many changes over time as the study of Native Americans/American Indians. While nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians portrayed Native Americans as savage barbarians or ignored them entirely, late twentieth-century historians portrayed them as victims of circumstance and aggressive European conquest. Today, modern...

“I am greatly honoured to receive the Medlicott medal and I thank the President for his much-too-kind remarks. It is fifty years since I attended my first meeting of the Historical Association and heard a lecture by Professor Medlicott himself, no less. The Association does a wonderful job in encouraging...

In Twelfth Night Shakespeare gently mocked the Puritans, who objected to stage plays and other entertainments. Yet within four decades, the Puritans had closed the London theatres and were about to seize power from Charles I. Among their many reforms were the banning of Christmas celebrations and of Twelfth Night itself....

The study of history has to be vibrant. It is about real people, real dramas, real narrative, real human dilemmas. It is not surprising that, despite manifold structural pressures working against us, take-up for GCSE history is once again buoyant. There are all manner of reasons for this - is...

In this podcast, Dr Tommy Dickinson of the University of Manchester, discusses the life and significance of Alan Turing.

Triumphs Show is a regular feature which offers a quick way for teachers to celebrate their successes and share inspirational ideas with one another. While the ideas are always explained in sufficient depth for others to be able to take them forward in their own practice, the simple format allows...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Sam Wineburg's work, in particular his groundbreaking Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (2001), has a great deal to teach us about the discipline of history, the nature of historical education, and the specific cognitive framework...

In autumn 2019, Kara Walker’s monumental sculpture, Fons Americanus, went on display in the Tate Modern, offering a poignant, troubling challenge to national commemoration. Walker depicts not the lingering vestiges of imperial glory, but sharks, tears, and haunted memories. She brings history into conversation with its contemporary legacies and engages...

For such a boldly iconoclastic work, the Key Stage 3 textbook A New Focus on ... British Social History, c.1920–2000 (2023) provides a disarmingly conventional account of youth in the 1960s as ‘mostly better educated and informed than their parents had been at their age [and able] … to find...