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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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Interpreting Agincourt: KS3 Scheme of Work
Scheme of Work
2015 was a year of anniversaries. As part of our funded commemoration projects surrounding the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, we commissioned this scheme of work looking at interpretations of the battle and period, particularly aimed at pupils in Key Stage 3.
It comes with a complete resource...
Interpreting Agincourt: KS3 Scheme of Work
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(Un)exceptional women: queenship and power in medieval Europe
Historian article
How was the power of a Queen described and how far did It extend? In this article some of the most important queens of the Medieval period are examined for the authority they were able to wield.
When we think of queens, the idea that they are extraordinary women, elevated to the highest status...
(Un)exceptional women: queenship and power in medieval Europe
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Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism
Historian article
Christopher Hill, the eminent historian of seventeenth century England, was a convinced Marxist throughout most of his long and productive life (1912-2003). He embraced this secular world-view when he was a young History student at Oxford in the polemical 1930s and never lost his ideological commitment, even though he resigned...
Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism
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The Sykes-Picot agreement and lines in the sand
Historian article
Paula Kitching reveals how a secret diplomatic negotiation 100 years ago provides an insight into the political complexities of the modern-day Middle East.
The Middle East is an area frequently in the news. Over the last ten years the national and religious tensions appear to have exploded with whole regions...
The Sykes-Picot agreement and lines in the sand
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Polychronicon 172: Health in the Middle Ages
Teaching History feature
The history of medicine, health, and illness between c. 500 AD and 1500 has received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent decades. It’s a fascinating field that can tell us a great deal about medieval people’s everyday lives and their day-to-day worries: after all, everyone is ill or...
Polychronicon 172: Health in the Middle Ages
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Seeing beyond the frame
Teaching History article
History teachers frequently show pupils visual images and often expect pupils to interrogate such images as evidence. But confusions arise and opportunities are missed when pupils do this without guidance on how to ‘read’ the image systematically and how to place it in context. Barbara Ormond gives a detailed account...
Seeing beyond the frame
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
A Polychronicon of the past
In autumn 2019, Kara Walker’s monumental sculpture, Fons Americanus, went on display in the Tate Modern, offering a poignant, troubling challenge to national commemoration. Walker depicts not the lingering vestiges of imperial glory, but sharks, tears, and haunted memories. She brings history into conversation with its contemporary legacies and engages...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
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Russian Revolution: Social Movements between the Revolutions Feb-Oct 1917
Lecture
On the 29th November Dr Jane McDermid gave the second of her lectures on the Russian Revolution, at the Weston Theatre, Manchester. John Laver, Principal Examiner in History at AQA also gave some invaluable advice on how to answer A Level History Exam questions.
Click the links below to access their lecture notes>>>...
Russian Revolution: Social Movements between the Revolutions Feb-Oct 1917
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Was Richard II Mad? An evening with Terry Jones
Event Podcast
On 19th June Terry Jones, 'Python', historian, broadcaster, actor, director and comedian called King Richard II a victim of spin at the annual Historical Association/English Association lecture at the Bishopsgate Institute. Here he sets out to rescue his reputation and lift the lid on the turbulent world of 14th century...
Was Richard II Mad? An evening with Terry Jones
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Early Modern Britain 1509-1745
HA Secondary Resources (Key Stage 3)
While the 2014 Curriculum sets out the broad focus of each particular content area, considerable choice has been left to history departments in determining which particular events or developments to include and how they can best 'combine overview and depth studies to help pupils understand both the long arc of...
Early Modern Britain 1509-1745
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Waking up to complexity
Teaching History article
Waking up to complexity: using Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers to challenge over-determined causal explanations
Teaching student to construct causal argument is a staple of history teaching and, in this year, questions about the causes of the First World War are particularly pertinent and once again the public eye. Claire Holliss,...
Waking up to complexity
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Lord North: The Noble Lord in the Blue Ribbon
Classic Pamphlet
In the last weeks of his life Lord North, we are told, expressed anxiety about his place in history - ‘how he stood and would stand in the world'. This, he owned, ‘might be a weakness, but he could not help it'. It was a weakness one suspects that he...
Lord North: The Noble Lord in the Blue Ribbon
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The Scottish Enlightenment
Classic Pamphlet
In recent decades, Scotland's distinctive contribution to the Enlightenment has been of increasing interest to scholars. Often very remarkable in an analytical view, such studies may nevertheless miss their sense of the story by treating Scottish insight in abstraction from Scottish life. Taking a more concrete approach, the present study...
The Scottish Enlightenment
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William the Silent and the Revolt of the Netherlands
Classic Pamphlet
The Revolt of the Netherlands was the most successful of all uprisings in early modern Europe and had far reaching effects on the course of Dutch and European history. In accounting for its outcome recent research has emphasized the significance of impersonal forces of political, economic or religious nature rather...
William the Silent and the Revolt of the Netherlands
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Practical classroom approaches to the iconography of Irish history or: how far back do we really have to go?
Teaching History article
Ben Walsh presents a structured practical activity for teaching pupils about Northern Ireland through the use of murals. The activity can be carried out in Year 9 as part of a study on the twentieth-century world, or as part of a GCSE course. He stresses the importance of an informed...
Practical classroom approaches to the iconography of Irish history or: how far back do we really have to go?
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Polychronicon 169: Herodotus
Journal article
You can buy a cheap flight to Bodrum (south-west Turkey), now a popular package holiday tourist destination and in antiquity named Halicarnassus, and visit ancient Greek temples and a theatre dating back more than 2,000 years. In Bodrum’s incomparable Underwater Archaeology Museum, you can admire the extraordinary Phoenician, Carian, Cypriot,...
Polychronicon 169: Herodotus
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Late Medieval Taxation Records
Historian article
There are more than 23,000 medieval taxation records from England and Wales in the Public Record Office alone. For many years the vast majority of them have lain undisturbed in their archive boxes, but recent work is showing the true value of some of these as historical sources and making...
Late Medieval Taxation Records
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Exploring big overviews through local depth
Teaching History article
Exploring big overviews through local depth
Rachel Foster and Kath Goudie's search for a more rigorous and interesting way of teaching Year 7 the Norman Conquest was initially driven by a desire to incorporate local history in a more meaningful way in their Key Stage 3 schemes of work.
This...
Exploring big overviews through local depth
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Crime & Punishment - Factors and Time Periods
Podcast
The history of crime and punishment across time spreads over 2500 years. It is really important that you have a way of making sense of this. In this podcast you will hear how the course has been divided into time periods, and learn about the main factors that affect crime,...
Crime & Punishment - Factors and Time Periods
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Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change
Teaching History article
For all that history teachers appreciate the need to build substantive knowledge and conceptual understanding systematically over time, they are also likely to have experienced that sickening moment when they realise that a Year 11 pupil has somehow missed something fundamental.
In Anna Fielding's case, her pupil's misconception was related to...
Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change
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Triumphs Show 193: Year 8 imagine the First World War trenches
Article
Deep into my PGCE year, I found myself discussing with my mentor how to pre-empt the barriers to understanding the past that students may face. One barrier we discussed was presentism: the tendency of students to interpret the past in light of their own modern knowledge, values and experiences. In particular, we considered...
Triumphs Show 193: Year 8 imagine the First World War trenches
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Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
Historian article
Daniel Goldhagen defines anti-semitism as ‘negative beliefs and emotions about Jews qua Jews.' Nazis believed Jews to be the source of Germany's misfortunes, and that they must be denied German citizenship and removed from German society. Hitler never compromised on the need to settle what he regarded as the Jewish...
Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
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Assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
Teaching History article
Defying the Iron Duke: assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
The approaching bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo has stimulated debate about how it should be commemorated. This article reports a collaboration between the Waterloo200 Committee and Tom Wheeley, history teacher, to create a lesson sequence analysing the...
Assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
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Cunning Plan 183: Teaching a broader Britain, 1625–1714
Teaching History feature
‘Gruesome!’ was how we decided to describe our teaching of seventeenth-century British history, although ‘inadequate’ was probably more accurate. Oh, how much was wrong! We had…
Incoherence. The Civil War and Protectorate years plonked in between the Elizabethan Age and the origins of the industrial revolution. We had lost years!
A...
Cunning Plan 183: Teaching a broader Britain, 1625–1714
