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Jubilee and the Idea of Royalty
2002 Medlicott Lecture
The Medlicott Lecture delivered at the Historical Association Annual General Meeting on 27th April 2002, transcribed and featured in The Historian 76.
Jubilee and the Idea of Royalty
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Out and About in Washington DC
Historian feature
Not everyone loves the capital of the United States. To Ulysses S Grant, it was a ‘pestilential swamp’; to novelist Gore Vidal, a ‘city of the dead’. It is true that Washington still has its problems. The District of Columbia has the highest crime rate in the United States, and the...
Out and About in Washington DC
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Recorded webinar: Henry VIII on Tour
Finding a new perspective on the Tudors
During his lifetime, Henry VIII journeyed throughout his kingdom in what are known as royal 'progresses'. In this webinar, Anthony Musson will share research from the AHRC-funded 'Henry on Tour' project which seeks to reassess these progresses by exploring archival sources, archaeology, music and material culture. In addition to contributing...
Recorded webinar: Henry VIII on Tour
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Film: Stalin - Interpretations and Legacy
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Professor James Harris (University of Leeds) reflects upon how historical interpretations of Stalin have changed over time. Stalin’s legacy and influence continues to materialise in all subsequent Soviet and Russian administrations. The Man of Steel is used by politicians when they are looking for arguments to open...
Film: Stalin - Interpretations and Legacy
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Film: Gorbachev - Early life and influences
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Emeritus Professor Archie Brown of the University of Oxford discusses Mikhail Gorbachev's early life and the influence it had on his later life and thinking. Mikhail Gorbachev was born to a poor peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage in 1931. Badly affected by both the famine of 1930-33 and...
Film: Gorbachev - Early life and influences
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A Crusading Outpost: the City and County of Edessa - 1095-1153
Article
Edessa is not now to be found on maps of the Near East; instead there is Urfa, the Turkish name for the former Christian city lying in the upper region of the Euphrates valley some two hundred and fifty kilometres from the Mediterranean. Like Christian Edessa, Moslem Urfa is a...
A Crusading Outpost: the City and County of Edessa - 1095-1153
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A medley of medieval resources
Love medieval history? Podcasts, articles and more
Get medieval with HA podcasts
War and peace in medieval Britain (c. 1000-1300) The idea of medieval diplomacy evokes scenes of great drama: royal stalemates in which armies stared each other down across a river; the pomp and circumstance of taking oaths, and performing homage. To maintain or establish peace, rulers had to...
A medley of medieval resources
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Film: Gorbachev - Domestic Reform
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the USSR
Emeritus Professor Archie Brown explains how Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 and describes the domestic and international situation the USSR found itself in at this point of the Cold War.
He discusses Gorbachev's political and economic agenda and priorities, looks at the support and...
Film: Gorbachev - Domestic Reform
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Taj ul-Alam Safiatuddin Syah: a trailblazing Islamic queen
Historian article
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...
Taj ul-Alam Safiatuddin Syah: a trailblazing Islamic queen
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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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Robespierre: a reluctant terrorist?
Article
After a revolution to remove the monarchy did the French revolutionaries create another leadership of power over ideals? William Doyle re-evaluates the reputation of the so-called architect of terror during the French Revolutionary years.
Two recent books reflect a seemingly endless fascination with the man whose downfall brought the end...
Robespierre: a reluctant terrorist?
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Podcast: Re-imagining Democracy
Podcast
This podcast feature Professor Mark Philp of the University of Warwick discussing how people's perceptions of democracy changed between 1750 and 1850 and is based on the findings of the Re-imagining democracy project, begun in 2005 by Joanna Innes and Mark Philp.
Re-imagining Democracy: 1750-1850
1. Introduction. Democracy from negative...
Podcast: Re-imagining Democracy
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After the revolution: did Cromwell, Washington and Bonaparte betray revolutionary principles?
Historian article
This article examines the aftermath of three epoch-making periods of change – the English, American, and French Revolutions. A comparison of the trio of military commanders who gained power as a direct consequence of these upheavals reveals how the very political radicalism which brought them to power also threatened to...
After the revolution: did Cromwell, Washington and Bonaparte betray revolutionary principles?
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Film: Attic Inscriptions
Ancient Athenian Inscriptions
Public Museums, National Trust Properties and private homes across the UK contain thousands of antiquities deriving from the ancient Greek world. Many of these were obtained by those who ventured upon the Grand Tour, a cultural expedition to Europe undertaken by wealthy young men in the eighteenth and ninteteenth centuries. In...
Film: Attic Inscriptions
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Film: Party Politics 1714-1785
Film Series: Power and freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714-2010
In Episode 2, Dr Robin Eagles (History of Parliament), examines the birth of Britain’s two party system in the form of the Whigs and the Tories; two parties, whose rivalry would define politics in Britain from the Restoration and Glorious Revolution to the middle of the Victorian Age.
During this...
Film: Party Politics 1714-1785
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In conversation with Lyndal Roper
Historian feature
This year is the 500th anniversary of the German Peasants’ War (1524–25), the largest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. The Peasants’ War broke out a few years after Martin Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses (1517) that launched the Reformation and inspired the peasants’ demands, although Luther...
In conversation with Lyndal Roper
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The ripple effect: reaching new readers
Historian article
Philip Browne tells the story of his continuing journey with an eighteenth-century sea captain.
My book had been published and for the first time I held a copy in my hand. A warm sense of achievement and relief washed over me. My work was done. Now with a little encouragement from...
The ripple effect: reaching new readers
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Why did the prosecution of witches cease in England?
Pamphlet
This lucid survey of the history of witch trials in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth century focuses on the question of ‘why did the formal prosecution of witches cease?' Accusations of witchcraft can be found throughout the nineteenth century yet the last conviction was in 1712. Clive Holmes explores...
Why did the prosecution of witches cease in England?
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Henry V
Pamphlet
Christopher Allmand updates his earlier pamphlet on Henry V, taking into account research and ideas explored by historians over the last 50 years, to produce a much more rounded view of Henry V. The book is split into three parts - Henry V in history; Henry as he is viewed...
Henry V
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Podcast: Mad or Bad? Was Henry VI a tyrant?
Presidential Lecture 2011
Professor Anne Curry delivered her final Presidential lecture at the Historical Association Annual Conference 2011 in Manchester.
Henry VI (1422-61) was England's youngest king, only nine months old when he succeeded his famous father. Traditionally he is seen as incompetent, pious and, latterly, insane, and thereby causing the Wars of...
Podcast: Mad or Bad? Was Henry VI a tyrant?
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Stalinism
Classic Pamphlet
Stalin's remarkable career raises quite fundamental questions for anyone interested in history. Marxists, whose philosophy should cause them to downgrade the role of ‘great men' as an explanation of great events, have problems in fitting Stalin into the materialist interpretation of history: did not this man ride rough-shod over the...
Stalinism
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Copernicus and the Reformation of Astronomy
Classic Pamphlet
During the past four centuries, the processes of nature have come to be viewed in a new light through the progressive acquisition of the systematized, verifiable knowledge that we call science. The associated advances in technology have profoundly affected the circumstances of our daily lives, and have revolutionised the mutual...
Copernicus and the Reformation of Astronomy
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King James’s Book of Sports, 1617
Historian article
Forty years after his higher degree research into the history of sport, Trevor James explores the much wider context in which that research now stands.
Four hundred years ago, in 1617, James I made a decisive intervention into the simmering debate which had existed since the puritanical upsurge in Queen...
King James’s Book of Sports, 1617
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The Darien Scheme - Pamphlet
Classic Pamphlet
The colonisation project that became known as the Darien Scheme or Darien Disaster was an unsuccessful attempt by the Kingdom of Scotland to become a world trading nation by establishing a colony called "Caledonia" on the Isthmus of Panama on the Gulf of Darién in the late 1690s.
This pamphlet...
The Darien Scheme - Pamphlet
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Joseph Banks and his travelling plants, 1787-1810
Historian article
Jordan Goodman takes us on a botanical journey to the ends of the earth.
Joseph Banks never commanded a ship. In 1773, aged 30, he went on his last voyage, a short crossing from Hellevoetsluis, south Holland, to Harwich. Yet not only was the sea always at the centre of his...
Joseph Banks and his travelling plants, 1787-1810
