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Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
Retracing the trajectories of young survivors in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust
Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
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Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy
Historian article
The murder of America’s thirty-fifth president is often regarded as one of the key events in the recent history of the United States. Numerous conspiracy theories have made it appear more complex, and more mysterious, than was in fact the case.
No event in recent American history has been more comprehensively...
Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy
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Virtual Branch Recording: Food and drink in the medieval monastery
Article
In his recent book The Monastic World, Andrew Jotischky looks at how from the late Roman Empire onwards, monasteries and convents were a common sight throughout Europe. The history of monasticism is defined by the fierce and passionate abandonment of the ordinary comforts of life, the most striking being food and drink....
Virtual Branch Recording: Food and drink in the medieval monastery
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History Abridged: The medieval origins of university
Historian feature
History Abridged: In this feature we take a person, time, theme or event and tell you the vast rich history in small space. A long dip into history in a shortened form. See all History Abridged articles
Medieval history can suffer from an image problem. Even a conventional name for the period...
History Abridged: The medieval origins of university
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Philip Larkin: appreciating parish churches
Historian article
We pay tribute to one of Britain’s finest poets, at the centenary of his birth, and celebrate his sensitive recognition of the spiritual tradition to be found in parish churches.
There have been various tributes this year which have commemorated the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the celebrated poet, Philip...
Philip Larkin: appreciating parish churches
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Film: The ladies-in-waiting who served the six wives of Henry VIII
Virtual Branch
Every queen had ladies-in-waiting. Her confidantes and chaperones, they are the forgotten agents of the Tudor court. Experts at survival, negotiating the competing demands of their families and their queen, the ladies-in-waiting of Henry VIII’s wives were far more than decorative ‘extras’: they were serious political players who changed the...
Film: The ladies-in-waiting who served the six wives of Henry VIII
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Film: “The Talk Should Not Be Broadcast”: Homosexuality and the BBC before 1967
Virtual Branch
In the centenary year of the BBC, this Virtual Branch talk from Marcus Collins relates the strange tale of how the BBC did and did not broadcast about homosexuality in the 1950s and 1960s and what it tells us about sexuality, broadcasting and the origins of permissiveness in mid-twentieth century Britain.
Marcus Collins...
Film: “The Talk Should Not Be Broadcast”: Homosexuality and the BBC before 1967
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The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean
Historian article
The Duchy of Courland’s attempts to establish outposts in the Caribbean and Africa were not the only Baltic ventures across the Atlantic during the seventeenth century. However, the expeditions of the small vassal dukedom were possibly the most unlikely. The article introduces the motivations behind the Couronian colonial project, as...
The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean
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Out and About in Stockholm
Historian feature
When Désirée Clary – wife of French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte – arrived in Stockholm in 1811, she was appalled. It was true that she would eventually become Queen Desideria of Sweden and Norway, her husband having been elected heir-presumptive to the throne the previous year. But she left her new capital...
Out and About in Stockholm
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Film: Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?
Virtual Branch
Why is the term 'Armenian Genocide' controversial, with many countries still not acknowledging a genocide at all? What do we know about the event of 1915 and the plight of the Armenian community in Turkey? How can we grapple with a history that many people want to forget? In this...
Film: Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?
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Eastern Nigeria market women and European businesses in colonial Nigeria 1900–29
Historian article
In this article Folusho Alabi reveals a relatively unknown story from the history of the British Empire. She analyses the issues and strategic manoeuvres in an ongoing struggle between Nigerian market women and the British colonial authorities in the early twentieth century. Despite an innate imbalance of power in this struggle,...
Eastern Nigeria market women and European businesses in colonial Nigeria 1900–29
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Agincourt 1415-2015
Historian article
Agincourt has become one of a small number of iconic events in our collective memory. Anne Curry explores how succeeding generations have exploited its significance.
In his budget statement of 18 March 2015 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced £1m had been awarded to commemorate the 600th anniversary...
Agincourt 1415-2015
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Capturing public opinion during the Paris Commune of 1871
Historian article
In the year of its 150th anniversary, Jason Jacques Willems offers his thoughts on the importance of centrist opinion to our understanding of the Paris Commune.
2021 is the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, when a revolutionary Parisian movement was pitted against the French government. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870...
Capturing public opinion during the Paris Commune of 1871
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Old age care in the time of crisis: London in the sixteenth century
Historian article
In her lecture to the General Strand of the HA Conference, Christine Fox describes the successes and failures of London institutions in dealing with the sixteenth-century crisis of poverty and elderly care.
In late medieval and early modern thinking, human life was divided into three stages; youth, maturity, and old age. The latter...
Old age care in the time of crisis: London in the sixteenth century
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History Abridged: The City of Alexandria
Historian feature
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
One of the oldest cities...
History Abridged: The City of Alexandria
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Virtual Branch Recording: Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
Article
Jane Rogoyska tells the story of the Hôtel Lutetia, the only ‘grand’ hotel on the city’s bohemian Left Bank, serving as a meeting place for artists, musicians and politicians. André Gide took his lunch here, James Joyce lived in one of its rooms, Picasso and Matisse were regular guests. But...
Virtual Branch Recording: Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
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The British Empire on trial
Article
In the light of present-day concerns about the place, in a modern world, of statues commemorating figures whose roles in history are of debatable merit, Dr Gregory Gifford puts the British Empire on trial, presenting a balanced case both for and against.
In June 2020 when the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston...
The British Empire on trial
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Virtual Branch Recording: The First King of England
Article
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...
Virtual Branch Recording: The First King of England
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Doing history: Remembering the Wars of the Roses
Historian feature
This article examines how the Wars of the Roses have been remembered through memorials and presents the Battlefields Trust’s Wars of the Roses Memorial Database Project, launched in 2023. The open-access, crowd-sourced database maps monuments, plaques, battlefield markers and local commemorations linked to the conflicts. David Grummitt shows that remembrance...
Doing history: Remembering the Wars of the Roses
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Update: The Princes in the Tower
Historian feature
A subject of endless fascination for the historian, the story of the ‘princes in the Tower’ hit the news again recently, following the discovery of Richard III’s body in Leicester and Philippa Langley’s ensuing quest to show that the much-maligned king was not responsible for the princes’ deaths. In this...
Update: The Princes in the Tower
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The Historian 168: Economic History
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Ask The Historian
5 Editorial (Read article)
6 A stimulating journey along the ‘weary paths of Dryasdust’: using financial records to gain insights into medieval society – Alisdair Dobie (Read article)
11 Letters
12 Women who stirred the pot: female protagonists in early East India Company history – Karin Doull (Read...
The Historian 168: Economic History
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Petit’s impact on our understanding of Victorian life and culture
Historian article
Tiffany Igharoro, a Young Historian Award-winner, introduces us to the artwork of Revd John Louis Petit, showing that art not only reflects the times in which it is created, but can also be used to shape opinions.
The Revd John Louis Petit (1801–68) created thousands of paintings in his lifetime, many of which...
Petit’s impact on our understanding of Victorian life and culture
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Podcast: Life at the edge of the Roman Empire
Annual Conference Podcast 2019
Podcast: Life at the edge of the Roman Empire
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Show and Tell: three Branch book events
Historian article
When members of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Branch were invited to share their views on ‘Books that Changed History’, not all the contributions were as overtly revolutionary as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense nor as familiar as the King James Bible. Marie Davidson and Richard Binns tell us more....
Show and Tell: three Branch book events
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Recorded Webinar: Understanding Lenin’s Government, 1917-24
Article
In this webinar Dr Douds examines the nature of political authority in the nascent Soviet Republic and the institutional structures, practices and ideology of government in the Lenin period. She considers how Communist Party dictatorship and the monolithic party-state emerged in the early years following the October Revolution of 1917...
Recorded Webinar: Understanding Lenin’s Government, 1917-24
