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Using the back cover image: painted wooden police truncheon
Primary History feature
This painted wooden police truncheon dates from the reign of King William IV (1830–37). It is decorated with a crown and the letters WIVR, standing for King William IV. For some pupils, its function may be obvious, for others it may be mistaken for a rounders or baseball bat, or...
Using the back cover image: painted wooden police truncheon
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Power, authority and geography
Teaching History article
Dissatisfied by her previous enquiries on medieval kingship and inspired by Helen Castor’s 'She-Wolves', Elizabeth Carr sought to incorporate the stories of powerful medieval women such as Empress Matilda and Eleanor of Aquitaine into her Key Stage 3 curriculum. Carr used these stories to highlight to her pupils the crucial...
Power, authority and geography
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Do we have to read all of this?' Encouraging students to read for understanding
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What’s the hardest part of history? Heads of Year 9 at options time seem depressingly clear - ‘Don’t do history, there’s too much writing.’ David Hellier and Helen Richards show that at The Green School...
Do we have to read all of this?' Encouraging students to read for understanding
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Stretching the straight jacket of assessment: use of role play and practical demonstration to enrich pupils' experience of history at GCSE and beyond
Teaching History article
As in his previous, popular and influential Teaching History articles, Ian Luff has once again provided us with a wide range of high-quality, practical activities informed by a rigorous and persuasive rationale. This time, he has turned his attention to the use of role play and active demonstration at GCSE...
Stretching the straight jacket of assessment: use of role play and practical demonstration to enrich pupils' experience of history at GCSE and beyond
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Bringing the past to life!
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As an archaeologist who, after being a bit bored with history at school, discovered the excitement of the past through digging in dirt and finding things, I get frustrated by people not ‘getting' what archaeology...
Bringing the past to life!
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Primary History 14
The primary education journal of the Historical Association
4 Not Henry VIII! - Ann Darrant
6 History Through the Streets - Robin Coulthard
8 We Plough the Fields - Patrick Wood & Norma Bell
10 Digging for Victory - Erica Pounce
15 An Active Approach to Ancient History: the Greeks - Harriet Martin
18 Grace Darling and Reception Children...
Primary History 14
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Unravelling the complexity of the causes of British abolition with Year 8
Teaching History article
Elizabeth Marsay wanted to ensure that her students were not hindered in their causal explanations of the abolition of slavery by being exposed to overly categorical, simplistic, and monocausal narratives in the classroom. By drawing on both English and Canadian theorisation about causation, Marsay outlines how her introduction of competing...
Unravelling the complexity of the causes of British abolition with Year 8
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Happy 200th birthday Florence Nightingale!
Primary History article
2020 is undoubtedly going to be an important year in the nursing world and is a significant historical anniversary. The World Health Organisation has declared it the ‘Year of the Nurse and Midwife’ in part because Florence Nightingale, the famous ‘Lady with the Lamp’, will be celebrating her 200th birthday...
Happy 200th birthday Florence Nightingale!
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Bonapartism after Napoleon III: the Prince Imperial and Eugene Loudun
Historian article
Emperor Napoleon III of France was deposed in 1870 and then died three years later. His son, known as the Prince Imperial, lived in exile in south-east England. There he and his supporters kept alive ambitions for a triumphant return of the Empire. In this article, Ian Sygrave assesses the...
Bonapartism after Napoleon III: the Prince Imperial and Eugene Loudun
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Teaching History 160: Evidential Rigour
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 HA Update
08 The power of context: the portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and Lady Elizabeth Murray - Jane Card (Read article)
16 ‘Miss, did this really happen here?' Exploring big overviews through local depth - Rachel Foster and Kath Goudie (Read article)
26 Teaching the...
Teaching History 160: Evidential Rigour
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How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Teaching History article
While history teachers (and examiners) regularly invite students to consider what cartoons or paintings reveal about contemporary attitudes to particular social or political developments, such sources are often difficult to interpret and to use appropriately. Drawing on a wealth of detailed research and a passion to support teachers and students with...
How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
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New, Novice or Nervous? 160: Progression in evidential understanding
Teaching History feature
You have a wealth of fascinating sources you would love to explore with students but despair at their seeming inability to connect ‘source work' with the construction of historical claims. Year 7 get stuck in the ‘it's biased so we can never know' trap again and again. Year 9 students...
New, Novice or Nervous? 160: Progression in evidential understanding
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Radicalism and its Results, 1760-1837
Classic Pamphlet
Radicalism with a large "R", unlike Conservatism with a large "C" and Liberalism with a large "L", is not a historical term of even proximate precision. There was never a Radical Party with a national organization, local associations, or a treasury. But there were, and there are, "Radicals", generally qualified...
Radicalism and its Results, 1760-1837
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Scots Abroad in the Fifteenth Century
Classic Pamphlet
(Historical Association Pamphlet, No. 124, 1942)
Dunlop's research into the occupations and attitudes of Scots abroad during the 15th century uncovers some surprising revelations about all members of the Scottish ex-pat society.
She particularly notes the ‘scurrilous' opinions of the French regarding Scotsmen's behaviour. While Scottish diplomatists and envoys tended...
Scots Abroad in the Fifteenth Century
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History and the Common Man
Classic Pamphlet
Speaking in April 1966 at the Historical Association's 60th annual conference, then president Geoffrey Barraclough marks The HA's Diamond Jubilee anniversary by urging his audience to look to the future.
Noting the successes of the Association over the previous decade, Barraclough expresses the importance of ensuring the general public are made...
History and the Common Man
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Reinventing the Charter: from Sir Edward Coke to 'freeborn John'
Historian article
When was Magna Carta launched on its modern career as a symbol of freedom and liberty? Justin Champion looks at the role of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century lawyers and politicians in shaping how we see the Charter today.
‘For every person who knows what the contents of Magna Carta actually...
Reinventing the Charter: from Sir Edward Coke to 'freeborn John'
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Cunning Plan 158: teaching about the history of the UK Parliament
Teaching History feature
2015 is something of a year of anniversaries. It is 50 years since Churchill's death, 200 years since Waterloo, 300 since the Jacobite ‘Fifteen', 600 since Agincourt, 800 since Magna Carta. Clearly every year brings around its own crop of anniversaries; this year just seems to have quite a few...
Cunning Plan 158: teaching about the history of the UK Parliament
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The Historian 119: Women in History
The magazine of the Historical Association
5 Editorial
6 Queenship in Medieval England: A Changing Dynamic? - Louise Wilkinson (Read article)
12 Petticoat Politicians: Women and the Politics of the Parish in England - Sarah Richardson (Read article)
17 The President's Column
18 Strange Journey: the life of Dorothy Eckersley - Stephen M. Cullen (Read Article)...
The Historian 119: Women in History
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1066: The Limits of our Knowledge
Historian article
As the most pivotal and traumatic event in English history, the Norman Conquest continues to generate controversy and debate, especially among those who know little about it or enjoy passing judgement on the past. Who had the better claim to the English throne, William the Conqueror or Harold Godwineson? Was...
1066: The Limits of our Knowledge
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Captain Thomas and the North West Passage
Classic Pamphlet
In the early years of the seventeenth century Englishmen vigorously prosecuted the search for a North West Passage to the Pacific. The fabled wealth of India and Cathay beckoned to them as enticingly as it had attracted their sixteenth century predecessors. The foundation of the English East India Company in...
Captain Thomas and the North West Passage
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Building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
Teaching History article
The knowledge that ‘flavours' a claim: towards building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
While marking some Year 11 essays, Kate Hammond found her interest caught by significant differences between one kind of strong analysis and another. Some scored high marks but were less convincing. The achievement in these...
Building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
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Queen Anne
Classic Pamphlet
In this pamphlet, James Anderson Winn, author of a recent biography of Queen Anne, recommends a new approach to historians writing about this successful and popular queen. Female, overweight, and reticent, Anne has long been underestimated. Her letters, however, show how well she understood the motives of her ministers, and...
Queen Anne
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Richard III and the Princes in the Tower: update
Historian article
Richard III is one of the most famous kings of England, as much for his Shakespearean mythology as for the reality of his reign. Here, the different accounts of him are explored to shed light on some of his actions and legacy.
The fascination evoked by Richard III and the...
Richard III and the Princes in the Tower: update
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French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?
Historian article
The year 1066 - the one universally remembered date in English history, so well-known that banks advise customers not to choose it as their PIN number - opened the country up to French influence in spectacular fashion. During the ‘long twelfth century' (up to King John's death in 1216) that...
French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?
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Eweka's story: Benin and Big Picture History
Article
The prospect of teaching Benin as a non-European Study within the time frame 900-1300 AD is challenging! Traditional oral evidence suggests that the critical event during this period in Benin's past was a transition from the Ogiso to the Eweka Dynasty, named after its first Oba, which resulted in it...
Eweka's story: Benin and Big Picture History
