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Out and About: Kennington and the Elephant and Castle
Historian feature
The HA's very own Martin Hoare takes us on a tour of Kennington and Elephant and Castle, to some lesser-known gems that ought to be higher on the London tourist trail.
Over the years of working for the HA I’ve quite often used my lunch break to take walks around the areas...
Out and About: Kennington and the Elephant and Castle
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My Favourite History Place: Swarkestone Bridge
Historian feature
Trevor James reveals his continued fascination with this major Midland scheduled monument.
Almost 40 years ago, my role as a Nottingham University extra-mural tutor took me to Melbourne in Derbyshire. For the first few weeks I followed a cross-country route to Melbourne, via Burton-upon-Trent, Woodville and Hartshorne, but, on a dark November...
My Favourite History Place: Swarkestone Bridge
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Cinderella dreams: young love in post-war Britain
Historian article
In a lecture given to the Cambridge branch, Carol Dyhouse explains changing attitudes to marriage in the 1950s and 60s.
Women teachers in the 1950s and 1960s regularly complained about how hard it was to keep girls’ attention on their schoolwork. Educationist Kathleen Ollerenshaw pointed out that the prospects of marriage,...
Cinderella dreams: young love in post-war Britain
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Memories of Croydon Airport - Film (Bursary Project)
Memories of Croydon Airport
The Historical Association was left a legacy by Joan Lewin which became the Joan Lewin Education Bursary Fund. Each year, applicants apply for grants for education projects surrounding aspects of teaching and learning, resources, or education research. A Film by students of John Fisher School, Croydon, looking at the history of Croydon's...
Memories of Croydon Airport - Film (Bursary Project)
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Out and About in Cairo
Historian feature
Nicolas Kinloch guides us round the fascinating city of Cairo.
Cairo has always been a traveller’s destination. That indefatigable explorer, ibn Battuta, arrived there in 1326, and declared that it was ‘boundless in its multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendour...extending a friendly welcome to strangers’. Most of this is...
Out and About in Cairo
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German universities under the Nazis
Historian article
In this article A.D. Harvey draws out the influence that Nazism and Nazi practices had on German universities and their staff. He explores how some university professors were active members of the party while others saw a chance of advancement by becoming conduits of the Nazi ideas. Finally he considers...
German universities under the Nazis
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Why was it so important to see Dunkirk as a triumph rather than a disaster in 1940?
Historian article
Karin Doull investigates the perceptions of the outcome of the Dunkirk evacuation within the contextual framework of the time at which it occurred.
In May 1940 the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and a proportion of the French First Army group had withdrawn, under heavy fighting to the port of Dunkirk on the...
Why was it so important to see Dunkirk as a triumph rather than a disaster in 1940?
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Exploring Twentieth-Century History
Article
For a long time, history curricula on the 20th century prioritised the narrative of a slide from World War I to World War II and fascism above many other topics. But the history of the 20th century is both far more complicated and far more interesting than that. For the historians writing here, the...
Exploring Twentieth-Century History
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Terriers in India
Historian Article
Peter Stanley is working on the largely unexplored history of the thousands of British Territorial soldiers who served in India during the First World War using their letters and diaries. He is trying to discover what happened to these men when they returned to Britain. Did their service in India...
Terriers in India
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George Eliot and Warwickshire history
Historian article
David Paterson explains how George Eliot’s vivid memory of her childhood in north Warwickshire is revealed through her novels.
George Eliot, born 200 years ago this year, is one of our greatest novelists, born and brought up in Warwickshire, a county in which she spent the first 30 years of...
George Eliot and Warwickshire history
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Films: Brezhnev – Interpretations
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
(Student and corporate secondary members can view these films in our Student Zone)
Leonid Brezhnev was the second longest serving leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin, overseeing some of the most difficult relations between East and West, yet he does not have the popular cultural legacy of some of the...
Films: Brezhnev – Interpretations
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On Black Lives Matter
Article
2020 has been an interesting year in many ways – both as a year to make history and one that has sought to tackle many representations of the past. The Black Lives Matter campaign that has taken on new energy across the globe in response to the killing of a...
On Black Lives Matter
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Enduring Civilisation: cities and citizens in the ‘Aztec Empire’
Historian article
Katherine Bellamy explores the cities and citizens at the heart of the so-called ‘Aztec Empire’, a vast and complex network of distinct indigenous communities who endured despite Spanish colonisation.
The term ‘civilisation’ is derived from the Latin, civilis (civil), and closely connected to civitas (city) and civis (citizen). The cities...
Enduring Civilisation: cities and citizens in the ‘Aztec Empire’
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When was the post-war?
Article
There is a peculiar tension at the heart of scholarship about the years and decades after the Second World War. On the one hand, the political developments following the breakdown of the war-time alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union have spawned an enormous literature, in parts as old...
When was the post-war?
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History of the Cumbria Branch
Branch History
Cumbria Branch was founded in November 1971 as a result of a very successful tour of Hadrian's Wall, led by Peter Southern. We decided we needed a more permanent influence of the H.A. in Carlisle and Cumbria. There had been a Carlisle Branch earlier in the C20th but it folded...
History of the Cumbria Branch
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Out and about in Nottingham
Historian feature
There were people living in Nottinghamshire as far back as 40,000 BC, as excavations in the limestone caves at Cresswell Crags (near Worksop) have proved. Much later, when the Romans came, they drove two roads through parts of the county – the Fosse Way to the South, with associated developments...
Out and about in Nottingham
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Films: Boris Yeltsin – Interpretations
Film series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Borisn Yelstin was the Russian leader from the collapse of the Soviet Union through to the leadership of Vladimir Putin. A key pivotal figure of the twentieth century, he had as an important an impact on Russia and global politics as any of the Soviet leaders of the 1970s and 80s and...
Films: Boris Yeltsin – Interpretations
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Britain and Brittany: contact, myth and history in the early Middle Ages
Historian article
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...
Britain and Brittany: contact, myth and history in the early Middle Ages
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Real Lives: Flora Sandes
Historian feature
Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...
Real Lives: Flora Sandes
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Film series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
From Lenin to Yeltsin | New film series for 2024-2025
We are delighted to present a new film series examining leadership in Russia and the USSR over the course of the twentieth century.
Russia and its history often fascinates the rest of us in Europe as well as horrifying us. She has been our friend and ally, and our physical and ideological...
Film series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
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Does historical fiction matter for children?
Historian article
Can you remember a book from when you were young that took you to another place that was fascinating, intriguing and felt real but wasn’t Narnia? Quite often those books were historical fiction; sometimes they were more fiction than history and sometimes vice versa. While the Ladybird histories were some people’s...
Does historical fiction matter for children?
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Gone with the Wind: a great book?
Historian article
HA President Tony Badger examines the historical context which shapes our understanding of Margaret Mitchell’s enduring novel.
I had been a historian of the American South for 50 years and like Ringbaum, I had a secret. I had never read Gone with the Wind. As I came up to retirement...
Gone with the Wind: a great book?
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Films: Khrushchev – Interpretations
Film series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
(Student and corporate secondary members can view these films in our Student Zone)
Khrushchev came to power in the Soviet Union at a time when the whole region was used to living on a knife's edge. He appeared to usher in a more relaxed calm era as though that had...
Films: Khrushchev – Interpretations
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The Historian 139: The Anglo-Saxons
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial (Read article)
6 New light on Rendlesham: lordship and landscape in East Anglia, 400-800 – Christopher Scull and Tom Williamson (Read article)
12 The Venerable Bede: recent research – Conor O’Brien (Read article)
16 Alfred versus the Viking Great Army – Caitlin Ellis (Read article)
23 The President’s Column...
The Historian 139: The Anglo-Saxons
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Britain’s Jews in the First World War
Book review
Britain’s Jews in the First World War, Paula Kitching, Amberley, 2019, 286p, £14-99. ISBN 978-1-4456-6320-3
The title of this book does not fully convey the importance of its contents and focus. It provides a variety of perspectives on the Jewish involvement in the British war effort in the Great War....
Britain’s Jews in the First World War
