-
Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890
Historian article
One hundred and twenty years ago the advent of the first red May Days caused major concern across Europe. To general surprise, in 1890 and the next few years some of the largest rallies occurred in London. In Britain the main demonstration on the nearest Sunday to May Day passed...
Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890
-
Culture Shock: The Arrival of the Conquistadores in Aztec Mexico
Historian article
When the Spanish Conquistadores arrived in Mexico during the early sixteenth century there were many repercussions for the indigenous people. Their conversion to Christianity and the sacking of their temples are two of the most well known examples. However, it is often forgotten that the Aztecs had only a pictorial...
Culture Shock: The Arrival of the Conquistadores in Aztec Mexico
-
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
-
Hammer, House of Horror: The making of a British film company, 1934 to 1979
Historian article
The now legendary film company Hammer made such classics as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), plus their numerous sequels and subsequent remakes of old Universal Gothic chillers (The Curse of the Werewolf, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera), as well as making international stars out of Peter...
Hammer, House of Horror: The making of a British film company, 1934 to 1979
-
The Miraculous Crusade: The Role of the Mystical and Miraculous in the Morale and Motivation of the First Crusade
Historian article
The First Crusade may be considered the only really successful crusade in that it achieved its stated goal, but it demanded great courage and stamina of its participants in their journey to the Holy City of Jerusalem, fighting their way through an unforgiving hostile territory. But courage and stamina by...
The Miraculous Crusade: The Role of the Mystical and Miraculous in the Morale and Motivation of the First Crusade
-
Sir Robert Peel: The Life and Legacy
Review
Sir Robert Peel: The Life and Legacy by Richard A. Gaunt
(I.B. Tauris), 2010
264pp., £20 hard. ISBN 978-184885354
The two-volume biography of Peel by Norman Gash was published in 1961 and 1967. Gash sees Peel as a pragmatic administrator and an instinctively consensual politician whose great achievement was to...
Sir Robert Peel: The Life and Legacy
-
The New Imperialism
Classic Pamphlet
This Classic Pamphlet first published in 1970 comes with a new introduction written by the author M. E. Chamberlain.The New Imperialism - Introduction by M. E. Chamberlain Professor Emeritus at Swansea University. May 2010.When this pamphlet was first published imperialism was a hot political topic and battle raged between Marxist and...
The New Imperialism
-
Podcast Series: The Crusades
Multipage Article
An HA Podcasted History of the Crusades featuring Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Professor Jonathan Phillips of Royal Holloway, University of London and Dr Tom Asbridge of Queen Mary, University of London.
Podcast Series: The Crusades
-
Podcast Series: Modern China
Multipage Article
An HA Podcasted History of Modern China featuring Dr Yangwen Zeng of the University of Manchester, Professor Rana Mitter and Professor Patricia Thornton of the University of Oxford and Professor Arne Westad of the London School of Economics.
Podcast Series: Modern China
-
Food, history and a sense of place?
Historian article
It ought to be possible to match many of the letters of the alphabet to an English place-name and its particular food-stuff. From Bath Buns to Yorkshire Pudding, this puzzle might go, by way of cakes from Eccles and Pontefract. Can you think of other letters of the alphabet and...
Food, history and a sense of place?
-
Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
Historian article
The late Frank Ellis was working on a full biography of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, at the time of his death in 2007. He had contributed a life of Wilmot to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography which appeared in 2004. In it he wrote that ‘on 21 November...
Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
-
Charles Gilpin
Historian article
Family Background and Early Life
Charles Gilpin was born in Bristol in 1815, the son of James Gilpin, a Quaker draper, and Mary Gilpin nee Sturge. The Sturges were a notable Quaker Liberal family, active in the campaign against slavery. Their relatives included the Darbys of Coalbrookdale. Charles Gilpin was...
Charles Gilpin
-
Out & About in Laxton
Historian feature
Where is Laxton?
The village is in north Nottinghamshire, formerly called Lexington (Lexitune). The village is based around the Church of St Michael and, of course, its hostelry, the Dovecote Inn. Most of the farms are properties which are long and thin and they have "closes" which stretch back from...
Out & About in Laxton
-
Occult and Witches
Historian article
Occult and Witches: Some Dramatic and Real Practitioners of the Occult in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Periods
One purpose of this paper is to show a correspondence between real-life Elizabethan and Jacobean practitioners of the occult and the depiction of their theatrical counterparts, with particular reference to perceived differences between,...
Occult and Witches
-
Men's Beards and Women's Backsides
Historian article
Since the late Middle Ages periods in which it was fashionable for men to be clean-shaven have alternated in Europe with periods in which it was fashionable for men to wear beards. In some periods clean-shavenness went together with long hair, at others beards went together with short hair, and...
Men's Beards and Women's Backsides
-
The Industrial Revolution in England
Classic Pamphlet
Revolutions of the magnitude of the industrial revolution in England provoke historical controversy: such a revolution is a major discontinuity which a profession more skilled in explaining small changes finds difficult to understand. A revolution that touches a whole society is so diffuse that its significant events are difficult to...
The Industrial Revolution in England
-
The Albigensian Crusade
Classic Pamphlet
At the time of the First Crusade southern France was strongly Catholic: the army led by Raymond IV of Toulouse was the largest single force to take part in the expedition and was recruited from all classes. Yet eighty years later the Count's grandson, Raymond V, sent this appeal form...
The Albigensian Crusade
-
The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
Classic Pamphlet
The defeat of the revolution of 1905 afforded the absolutist Tsarist monarchy an opportunity to reform the administration and to seek a new basis of support in place of the declining gentry class. Historians have been divided ever since over the constitutional system's chances of success. Had Tsardom advanced far...
The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
-
Edward II
Review
Edward II by Seymour Phillips
(Yale English Monarchs, Yale University Press), 2010
679pp., £25 hard, ISBN 978-0-300-15657-7
Stuck between two of the greatest medieval English monarchs his father Edward I, the ‘Hammer of the Scots' and his son Edward III, it is hardly surprising that Edward II has gained the...
Edward II
-
Limited Monarchy in Great Britain in the Eighteenth Century
Classic Pamphlet
There was hardly anything in Great Britain which political thinkers on the continent of Europe in the eighteenth century admired more than its limited monarchy. But what were the limitations? Were they deliberate or not? Were they effected by acts of parliament or by the silent encroachments of usage? Did...
Limited Monarchy in Great Britain in the Eighteenth Century
-
Tudor Enclosures
Classic Pamphlet
Tudor enclosures hold the attention of historians because of the fundamental changes which they wrought in our system of farming, and in the appearance of the English countryside. At the same time, the subject is continually being re-investigated, and as a result it is no longer presented in the simple...
Tudor Enclosures
-
The Establishment of English Protestantism 1558-1608
Classic Pamphlet
The Reformation which Queen Elizabeth and her ministers created was a series of acts of state, but if we consider it only at the level of official hopes and pronouncements, we will paint a picture of hopeless unreality. For the Reformation to success, the government needed to follow up its...
The Establishment of English Protestantism 1558-1608
-
The 'Penny Dreadful'
Historian article
"I wish I know'd as much as you, Dick. How did you manage to pick it up?"
"Mother taught me most, and I read all the books I can get."
"So do I; sich rattling tales, too ---‘The Black Phantom; or, the White Spectre of the Pink Rock.' It's fine,...
The 'Penny Dreadful'
-
The Road to Dunkirk
Historian article
Seventy years after the outbreak of the Second World War, British foreign policy in the 1930s remains as controversial as ever. While appeasement is now a byword for political failure, the reasons for its adoption and the responsibility of the statesmen concerned are constantly debated. In general, opinion looks unfavourably...
The Road to Dunkirk
-
A Commercial Revolution
Classic Pamphlet
The pattern of overseas trade is always in movement: new commodities are constantly appearing, old ones fading into unimportance, different trading partners coming to the fore-front. But between the latter end of the sixteenth and the second half of the eighteenth century, change took specially far reaching forms. In 1570...
A Commercial Revolution
