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Found 919 results matching 'brief history' within Secondary > Curriculum Support > Periods and Themes   (Clear filter)

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  • Polychronicon 171: Policing in Nazi Germany

      Teaching History feature
    The nature of policing in Nazi Germany is a subject which continues to fascinate historians. The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) was an integral part of the Nazi terror system but historians have been and still are at odds as to how it actually functioned. Areas of debate have focused on the...
    Polychronicon 171: Policing in Nazi Germany

  • Papal Election and Murder

      Historian article
    Before the smoke clears: The longest papal election in history was marred by a brutal murder Papal elections never used to be so short or easy. In 1268 Pope Clement IV died and the cardinals, divided between French and Italian factions, would be deadlocked for the next three years over...
    Papal Election and Murder

  • Cathars and Castles in Medieval France

      Historian article
    Almost exactly 800 years ago, in September 1213, a decisive battle was fought at Muret, about ten miles south-west of Toulouse. King Peter II of Aragon, fighting with southern allies from Toulouse and elsewhere, faced an army largely made up of northern French crusaders who had invaded the region at the...
    Cathars and Castles in Medieval France

  • Polychronicon 168: Interwar internationalisms

      Teaching History feature
    Research on the inter war years (1919-39) has exploded in recent years. Led by exciting studies of global and international institutions by Susan Pedersen, Patricia Clavin and Mark Mazower, historians have moved beyond narrowly political and diplomatic accounts of the leading personalities and agencies attached to key institutions such as...
    Polychronicon 168: Interwar internationalisms

  • The Tudor Court

      Classic Pamphlet
    In 1976, in one of his challenging Presidential addresses to the Royal Historical Society, Professor Geoffrey Elton drew attention to the importance of the court as a ‘point of contact' between the Tudors and their subjects. It was, he suggested, a central and essential aspect of personal government, but in...
    The Tudor Court

  • From road map to thought map: helping students theorise the nature of change

      Teaching History article
    Warren Valentine was dissatisfied with his Year 7 students’ accounts of change across the Tudor period. Fixated with Henry VIII’s wives, they failed to reflect on or analyse the bigger picture of the whole Tudor narrative. In order to overcome this problem, his department created a ‘thought-map’ exercise in which...
    From road map to thought map: helping students theorise the nature of change

  • Inverting the telescope: investigating sources from a different perspective

      Teaching History article
    As historians, we are dependent on evidence, which comes in many varieties. Rosalind Stirzaker here introduces a project which she ran two years ago to encourage her students to think about artefacts in a different way. They have examined randomly preserved artefacts such as those of Pompeii, and sets of...
    Inverting the telescope: investigating sources from a different perspective

  • Polychronicon 167: The strange career of Richard Nixon

      Teaching History feature
    If you know just one thing about the career of the 37th President of the United States, it is likely to be this: Watergate. Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 was caused by his decision to cover up a burglary at the Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters for the 1972 election, which...
    Polychronicon 167: The strange career of Richard Nixon

  • Charles XII

      Classic Pamphlet
    The reputation of Charles XII who became king of Sweden before he was fifteen years old and had the responsibility of absolutist goverment thrust upon him within the next six months - contrary to the plans laid down for him by his father - has tended to attract political rather...
    Charles XII

  • The Olympics - politics, impact and legacy - its not just about the sport

      Article
    2024 is an Olympic Games year. Held every four years (with the exception of during the World Wars and Covid-19 restrictions), the modern Olympics is the largest international sporting event in the world. However, historically it has not always been just the sports that are played and the athletes’ performances...
    The Olympics - politics, impact and legacy - its not just about the sport

  • Polychronicon 165: The 1917 revolutions in 2017: 100 years on

      Teaching History feature
    The interpretive and empirical frameworks utilised by scholars in their quest to understand the Russian revolutions have evolved and transformed over 100 years. The opening of archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union enabled access to a swathe of new primary sources, some of which have had a transformative...
    Polychronicon 165: The 1917 revolutions in 2017: 100 years on

  • Podcast Series: Britain's Changing Population

      Podcasted history
    In Part 3 of our series on Social and Political Change in the UK we look at diversity in the UK and examine African and Caribbean UK History, South Asian UK History and British Chinese History.  The first set of podcasts feature Dr Hakim Adi, Marika Sherwood, Dr Sumita Mukherjee & Dr...
    Podcast Series: Britain's Changing Population

  • Polychronicon 163: Europe: the longest debate

      Teaching History feature
    On 23 June, electors in the United Kingdom will vote on whether they wish to remain part of the European Union. The passionate debate around the question has seen the spectre of Hitler and the example of Churchill invoked, with varying  plausibility, by both sides. It has also drawn on the...
    Polychronicon 163: Europe: the longest debate

  • The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings

      Historian article
    How did King Harold II die at the Battle of Hastings? The question is simple enough and the answer is apparently well known. Harold was killed by an arrow which struck him in the eye. His death is depicted clearly on the Bayeux Tapestry in one of its most famous...
    The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings

  • Polychronicon 148: The Wars of the Roses

      Teaching History feature
    There are few periods in our history from which we turn with such weariness and disgust as from the Wars of the Roses. Their savage battles, their ruthless executions, their shameless treasons seem all the more terrible from the pure selfishness of the ends for which men fought, the utter...
    Polychronicon 148: The Wars of the Roses

  • Louis XIV

      Classic Pamphlet
    Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 and became King on May 14 1643 at the age of four years and eight months on the death of his father Louis XIII. He attended the Conseil d'en haut from 1649 when he was eleven years old. He announced his coming...
    Louis XIV

  • Engaging Year 9 with Victorian debates about 'progress'

      Teaching History article
    Jonathan White wanted to fill a gap in his students' knowledge of the history of ideas. Despite the appearance of Marx, Smith, Darwin and Malthus in the department's workscheme for Year 9, his Year 13 students appeared to lack any meaningful grasp of these nineteenth-century intellectual reference points. White therefore...
    Engaging Year 9 with Victorian debates about 'progress'

  • Year 8 and interpretations of the First World War

      Teaching History article
    Dan Smith was concerned that his pupils were drawing on over-simplified generalisations about different periods of the past when they were considering why interpretations change over time. This led him to consider how pupils’ contextual knowledge and chronological fluency might be used more explicitly in order to avoid weak generalisations...
    Year 8 and interpretations of the First World War

  • Polychronicon 162: Reinterpreting the May 1968 events in France

      Teaching History feature
    As Kristin Ross has persuasively argued, by the 1980s interpretations of the French events of May 1968 had shrunk to a narrow set of received ideas around student protest, labelled by Chris Reynolds a ‘doxa’. Media discourse is dominated by a narrow range of former participants labelled ‘memory barons’ –...
    Polychronicon 162: Reinterpreting the May 1968 events in France

  • Polychronicon 161: John Lilburne

      Teaching History feature
    John Lilburne might have been destined for obscurity in less interesting times. He was the second son of a minor gentry family, apprenticed to a London woollen merchant in 1632. It was his master’s connections that drew him into religious opposition to Charles I and the illegal book trade, resulting...
    Polychronicon 161: John Lilburne

  • Cunning Plan 161: Magna Carta's legacy

      Teaching History feature
    Both Dawson and Hayes have recently written Cunning Plans that show how exciting Magna Carta is. So why not stop there? Bring the barons to life with a flare of Dawson and send Magna Carta flying across the continent with just a hint of Hayes. Hey, from the same edition,...
    Cunning Plan 161: Magna Carta's legacy

  • Francis I and Absolute Monarchy

      Classic Pamphlet
    Francis I of France reign lasted for more than thirty years and coincided with movements as significant as the Renaissance and the Reformation. Text-books are apt to gloss over the domestic history of France before the outbreak of the Wars of Religion and convey the impression that Francis was more...
    Francis I and Absolute Monarchy

  • Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar

      Historian article
    Whenever British radar is discussed the name that usually comes to mind is that of Robert Watson Watt. Our history books and our dictionaries of biography consistently attribute the discovery of radar in Britain solely to Watson Watt, with little or no mention of the key role played by his...
    Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar

  • Alexander II

      Classic Pamphlet
    The ‘great reforms' of Tsar Alexander II (1855-81) are generally recognised as the most significant events in modern Russian history between the reign of Peter the Great and the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. The most important of Alexander's reforms, the emancipation of he serfs in 1861, has been described...
    Alexander II

  • 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