-
The British Communist Party 1920-1945
Article
With the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, archival material is becoming available not only on these regimes but also on communist parties in the West. Matthew Worley surveys the latest writing on the Communist Party of Great Britain. Since the collapse of Communism, a number of books...
The British Communist Party 1920-1945
-
Guy Fawkes in Manchester: The World of William Harrison Ainsworth
Historian article
Some of the most enduring myths in British history were created and perpetuated by novelists, despite the fact that the historical novel has long been relegated to the second division of the literary arts. Deeply unfashionable today, writers like Sir Walter Scott, Edward Bulwer Lytton and William Harrison Ainsworth were...
Guy Fawkes in Manchester: The World of William Harrison Ainsworth
-
Aristotle and Dudley: what can books tell us about their owners?
Historian article
Books as evidence
The study of books as objects can reveal a great deal about their owners and the society in which they lived. By examining why the books were printed in the first place, and by whom; why they were acquired and for what purpose; how they were bound;...
Aristotle and Dudley: what can books tell us about their owners?
-
The Historian 81: Maida Vale and the battle of Maida
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
6 Radiating the Revolution: Agitation in the Russian Civil War 1917-21 - Richard Taylor (Read article)
12 Look Back – But Not in Anger? A Manchester Boyhood - Donald Read (Read article)
17 Pressure and Persuasion Canadian agents and Scottish emigration, c. 1870 – c. 1930 - Marjory Harper...
The Historian 81: Maida Vale and the battle of Maida
-
The Historian 80: Queen Victoria as a Politician
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
6 The Casket Letters - A E MacRobert (Read article)
13 Recent Advances in the Study of Surnames - David Hey (Read article)
18 Mr Adams’ Free Grammar School - David and Ruth Taylor (Read article)
24 Queen Victoria as a Politician - Ian St John (Read article)...
The Historian 80: Queen Victoria as a Politician
-
Thomas Muir and the 'Scottish Martyrs' of the 1790s
Article
From the 1750s, after more than a century of intense political and religious disputes and of economic stagnation, Scotland began to enjoy several decades of almost unprecedented political stability, religious harmony, economic growth and cultural achievements. Jacobitism had been crushed and most propertied and influential Scots rallied to the Hanoverian...
Thomas Muir and the 'Scottish Martyrs' of the 1790s
-
The 'Era of the Dictators' Reconsidered
Article
Kenneth Thomson reflects on major aspects of the ‘era of the dictators’ after the collapse of Soviet Communism and its satellite regimes. In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, almost the whole of continental Europe was ruled by dictatorships of various political hues. Even countries, like France,...
The 'Era of the Dictators' Reconsidered
-
The Historian 78: Protestantism and art in early modern England
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
6 Protestantism and art in early modern England - Keith Thomas (Medlicott Lecture to the Historical Association at the Wallace Collection, London, 5 April 2003) (Read article)
18 To what extent was the failure of denazification in Germany 1945-48 a result of the apathy of the allies? -...
The Historian 78: Protestantism and art in early modern England
-
The price of reform: the people's budget and the present trauma
Historian article
When Lloyd George succeeded Asquith as Chancellor of the Exchequer in April 1908, his first task was to introduce the old age pensions Asquith had initiated. His second was to prove even more momentous. On 29 April 1909 he presented what has become known as "The People's Budget".
The task...
The price of reform: the people's budget and the present trauma
-
The Historian 76: Jubilee and the idea of Royalty
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
6 2002 Medlicott Lecture: Jubilee and the idea of Royalty - Ben Pimlott (Read article)
16 The Irish historians’ role and the place of history in Irish national life - George Boyce (Read article)
20 The origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict - Ritchie Ovendale (Read article)
28 Archbishops...
The Historian 76: Jubilee and the idea of Royalty
-
The Journey to Icarie and Reunion: A Romance of Socialism on the Texas Frontier
Historian article
The viewer of the internationally popular television show Dallas was routinely treated to an aerial tour that skimmed across the open prairie over the distinctive skyscrapers across the fifty-yard line of Texas Stadium and up the manicured pastures of South Fork.
This façade of larger-than-life Texana reflects an urban reality...
The Journey to Icarie and Reunion: A Romance of Socialism on the Texas Frontier
-
A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
Historian article
The Elizabethan Reformation in Staffordshire had a shallow seedbed. The radical reformers of the 1540s had greeted the conversion of the county with a mixture of high hopes and hyperbole. The East Anglian preacher and disciple of Latimer, Thomas Becon, wrote a treatise The Iewel of Ioye urging that itinerant...
A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
-
The Historian 107: The Price of Reform: The People's Budget and the Present Trauma
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Editorial
5 The President's Column - Anne Curry
6 The price of reform: the people's budget and the present trauma - Hugh Gault (Read Article)
9 The Journey to Icarie and Réunion: A Romance of Socialism on the Texas Frontier - Donald J. Kagay (Read Article)
15 Arnold Wilkins:...
The Historian 107: The Price of Reform: The People's Budget and the Present Trauma
-
The Historian 106: President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Editorial
5 The President's Column - Anne Curry
6 President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address - Michael Dunne (Read Article)
13 Remembering Neville Chamberlain - Brent Dyck (Read Article)
15 Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust? - Sarah Newman (Read Article)
20 The Advent of Decimalisation in...
The Historian 106: President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
-
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 British Union of Fascists: the international dimension
Article
Fascism failed in Britain in the 1930s – Europe’s decade of the ‘Brown plague’. Unlike in many European countries, fascists in Britain were never a serious threat to the democratic order. This was not for want of trying, especially on the part of Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union...
The British Union of Fascists: the international dimension
-
The Historian 73: Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
6 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English people - David Rollason (Read article)
11 Late Medieval Taxation Records - Peter Mackie (Read article)
16 Joseph Priestley’s American Dream - W. A. Speck (Read article)
24 Opposition and Resistance in the GDR - Dominik Geppert (Read article)
31 ‘Savages and...
The Historian 73: Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People
-
Recycling the Monastic building: The Dissolution in Southern England
Historian article
The dissolution of the monasteries was one of the most dramatic developments in English History. In 1536, the religious orders had owned about a fifth of the lands of England. Within four years the monasteries had been abolished and their possessions nationalised by Henry VIII. Within another ten years, most...
Recycling the Monastic building: The Dissolution in Southern England
-
Tony Blair, the Iraq War, and a sense of history
Historian article
Blair the war leader provided historians with countless opportunities to get their names in the newspapers, let alone voice their opinions across the airwaves. The usual suspects were lined up (Eric Hobsbawm and Ben Pimlott in the Guardian, Andrew Roberts and John Keegan in the Telegraph, Niall Ferguson in The...
Tony Blair, the Iraq War, and a sense of history
-
Chamberlain Day and the popular meaning of Tariff Reform
Historian article
Few Conservative institutions appealed to the Tory rank-and-file activist like the Tariff Reform League did in the opening two decades of the Twentieth Century. From its foundation in 1903, the League spearheaded Joseph Chamberlain’s crusade to grant tariffs on imported goods, acting as his grassroots organisation. This article attempts to...
Chamberlain Day and the popular meaning of Tariff Reform
-
'The end of all existence is debarred me': Disraeli's depression 1826-30
Historian article
During the years from 1826 to 1830 Benjamin Disraeli went through the slough of despond. His first major biographer,William Flavelle Monypenny, observed the ‘clouds of despondency which were now settling upon Disraeli's mind'. In his magisterial life of the great tory leader Robert Blake commented that ‘after completing Part II...
'The end of all existence is debarred me': Disraeli's depression 1826-30
-
Sir Francis Fletcher Vane, anti-militarist: The great boy scout schism of 1909
Historian article
Sir Francis Patrick Fletcher Vane, fifth baronet (1861-1934), a man of wideranging but seemingly contradictory passions and interests, was an idealistic but also hard-working aristocrat who played a major role in shaping the early Boy Scout movement in London. While the name of the founder of the Boy Scouts, Robert...
Sir Francis Fletcher Vane, anti-militarist: The great boy scout schism of 1909
-
What did you do in The Great War? A family mystery explored
Historian article
Research into family history is well-known as likely to dig up some uncomfortable evidence. Nearly every family has had its bastards; nearly every generation has had someone on poor relief. We had both. But more troubling was my recent suspicion that a hundred or so years ago not one but two...
What did you do in The Great War? A family mystery explored
-
The snobbery of chronology: In defence of the generals on the Western Front
Historian article
Faced with the testimony of the huge casualty lists of the First World War, the desperate battles of attrition, the emotive evidence of the seemingly endless cemeteries and memorials, the moving war poetry of men such as Owen and Sassoon, and the memoirs of those who fought, it is not...
The snobbery of chronology: In defence of the generals on the Western Front
-
Bertrand Russell's Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Historian article
'An attack on the United States with 10,000 megatons would lead to the death of essentially all of the American people and to the destruction of the nation.’ ‘In 1960 President Kennedy mentioned 30,000 megatons as the size of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.’ In the autumn of 1962...
Bertrand Russell's Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis
