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'If Jesus Christ were amongst them, they would deceive Him'
Teaching History article
During discussions about planning, Tim Kemp and Charlotte Bickmore recently concluded that despite the name they give to their major Year 8 unit (The Making of the United Kingdom), they tend mainly to focus on England, and even more especially, on London. They have a good point. Ask an average...
'If Jesus Christ were amongst them, they would deceive Him'
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'Please send socks': How much can Reg Wilkes tell us about the Great War?
Teaching History article
This was an opportunity all good historians dream about. A large box crammed with artefacts about a soldier who fought in the First World War, just begging to be read, studied, sorted and organised. Being faced with such a wealth of uncatalogued primary evidence could have proved daunting enough without...
'Please send socks': How much can Reg Wilkes tell us about the Great War?
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Triumphs Show 160: Prezi and propaganda
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
Laura Tilley recognised that her Year 9 students were finding it difficult to work out the intended message of visual propaganda. To help her students make better use of the substantive knowledge they already had, she devised an interactive activity using a presentation software, Prezi. This approach provided students with...
Triumphs Show 160: Prezi and propaganda
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Polychronicon 140: Why did the Cold War End?
Teaching History feature
The end of the Cold War is a controversial subject. Contemporary analysts did not see it coming. Any explanation of its ending which seeks to build up a network of causation will therefore be forced to make arguments based on events whose significance was not necessarily seen at the time....
Polychronicon 140: Why did the Cold War End?
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Lions of the Great War: How are Sikh soldiers of the First World War seen today?
Key Stage Three History scheme of work
This Key Stage Three History scheme of work focuses in depth on the contribution of Sikh soldiers from the Indian subcontinent fighting on behalf of the UK between 1914 and 1918. It is designed to follow on from a focus on the First World War, probably in Year Nine and...
Lions of the Great War: How are Sikh soldiers of the First World War seen today?
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Polychronicon 139: Civic denouncer: The lives of Pavlik Morozov
Teaching History feature
Germaine Greer (in the context of the Pirelli Calendar) once commented that the defining feature of a legend was that almost nothing said and believed about it was true. Pavlik Morozov, notorious both inside Russia and internationally for having denounced his father, almost certainly never did so. In September 1932, local...
Polychronicon 139: Civic denouncer: The lives of Pavlik Morozov
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Edwardian England
Classic Pamphlet
The Edwardian era is still less than a lifetime away. Yet the memoirs of surviving Edwardians, written any time between the nineteen-twenties and the nineteen sixties, have often made it sound like a remote epoch. The years between the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the outbreak of the...
Edwardian England
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Cunning Plan 178: How far did Anglo-Saxon England survive the Norman Conquest?
Teaching History feature
Cunning Plan for using the metaphor of a tree to help students characterise the process of change and engage with a historian’s argument.
In this Cunning Plan, Eve Hackett sets out how she used a recent work of history about the Norman Conquest as inspiration for her teaching of Year...
Cunning Plan 178: How far did Anglo-Saxon England survive the Norman Conquest?
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Harold Son of Godwin
Classic Pamphlet
To lecture on Harold Godwinson, earl of Wessex, King Harold II of England, in the year 1966 at Hastings is a presumption. We appear to know much about him, and yet in fact there are many gaps in knowledge. Much information, so plausible at first sight, proves unreliable on closer...
Harold Son of Godwin
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Peter the Great
Classic Pamphlet
No European ruler except Napoleon I has impressed both contemporise and later historians so profoundly as Peter I of Russia by the originality and the personal character of his achievements. Like Napoleon, Peter appeared to some observers, at least in his later years, as almost more than human. He seemed...
Peter the Great
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Polychronicon 133: The Crusader States in the Levant
Teaching History feature
In my first Polychronicon article on ‘The Crusades' I pointed out that research historians are increasingly specialising either on the crusades themselves or on the crusader states. There are good reasons for this, but in my opinion it makes little sense for school or university teachers to treat these topics...
Polychronicon 133: The Crusader States in the Levant
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Triumphs Show 133: Little Miss Cold War
Teaching History feature
Students can find it hard to understand and remember the differing schools of interpretation that they encounter at A2. The process of studying differing historiographic claims can also seem rather dry and tedious. It is crucial that they grasp differences in interpretation if they are to succeed in their examinations,...
Triumphs Show 133: Little Miss Cold War
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Cunning Plan 99: 'a world study after 1900'
Teaching History feature
This unit could still become a trawl through two World Wars and then the Cold War (if you don't run out of time). So, when reviewing your planning why not take advantage of being at the turn of a century? Ask pupils what will the twentieth century be remembered for?...
Cunning Plan 99: 'a world study after 1900'
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Cunning Plan 97: A-Level: International Relations 1890-1914
Teaching History feature
'No war is inevitable until it starts.' Good quote. Not mine, but A.J.P. Taylor's. The outbreak of the First World War is a good way to test it! Did the statesmen of the day know the First World War was coming? Put another way, why was there no general European...
Cunning Plan 97: A-Level: International Relations 1890-1914
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Polychronicon 132: Roman Emperors
Teaching History feature
Everyone has seen a Roman emperor. Whether at the British Museum's current Hadrian exhibition, or in Derek Jacobi's stuttering Claudius, or in Joachim Phoenix's psychotic Commodus, most people are aware of Roman emperors to some extent or other.1 They can be semi-legendary, or have been entirely ignored by posterity. Some...
Polychronicon 132: Roman Emperors
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Role Play 1: The Society Game
Teaching History Article
Applicable to Britain 1066-1500, Britain 1500-1750, Britain 1750-1900, and many aspects of GCSE and AS/A2 courses. The version given in full here is for use in a study of Victorian Britain.
This tackles the troublesome concept of relative status in a changing society. Exactly what is it that bestows status...
Role Play 1: The Society Game
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Polychronicon 127: The Crusades
Teaching History feature
Modern research on the crusades has concentrated on three basic questions. What were they? How were they justified? What motivated the crusaders? The first of these questions became controversial twenty-five years ago, when historians with a traditional approach to the subject, who took into consideration only those expeditions launched to...
Polychronicon 127: The Crusades
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Queen Anne
18th Century British History
In this podcast Lady Anne Somerset looks at the life, reputation and legacy of Queen Anne – the last of the Stuart monarchs, and the first sovereign of Great Britain.
Anne was born on 6 February 1665 in London, the second daughter of James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II. Like many...
Queen Anne
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Cunning Plan 111: Year 8 lesson on C.V. Wedgwood's writing
Teaching History feature
This edition of 'Cunning Plan' is a Year 8 lesson on C.V. Wedgwood's writing. There is also a supplementary download commenting on the C.V. Wedgwood text used.
Cunning Plan 111: Year 8 lesson on C.V. Wedgwood's writing
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Triumphs Show 105: Year 9s respond directly to 9/11
Teaching History feature
Caroline Godsell describes the reactions and concerns of two Year 9 classes after the 9/11 attack.
Triumphs Show 105: Year 9s respond directly to 9/11
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Confounding expectation at Key Stage 3: flower-songs from an indigenous empire
Teaching History article
In this article Nicolas Kinloch examines aspects of an indigenous empire: that of Aztec Mexico. He attempts to persuade a group of mixed-ability Year 8 students to examine - and question - some of the assumptions they bring to the study of this empire. Their attitudes reflect quite widespread beliefs...
Confounding expectation at Key Stage 3: flower-songs from an indigenous empire
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Teaching the Holocaust: the experience of Vad Vashem
Teaching History article
No institution is better known for its continuing work on the Holocaust than Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem. In this article Richelle Budd Caplan offers guidelines for teachers, based on its unrivalled experience. She demands that our teaching of this subject should aim to restore the identities of the victims. To do...
Teaching the Holocaust: the experience of Vad Vashem
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Recorded webinar: History, Politics and Journalism
Teacher and Student Study Session
History, politics and journalism are intertwined. In this webinar (filmed in December 2021) Professor Anna Whitelock and members of her department from City, University of London explore the inter-related history, politics and journalism of Russia and the Cold War. First, Dina Fainberg explores Soviet relations with the world under Nikita...
Recorded webinar: History, Politics and Journalism
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the long-term impact of the Black Death on English towns
A Polychronicon of the Past
In the summer of 1348, the Chronicle of the Grey Friars at Lynn described how sailors had arrived in Melcombe (now Weymouth) bringing from Gascony ‘the seeds of the terrible pestilence’. The Black Death spread rapidly throughout England, killing approximately half the population. While the cause of the disease, the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the long-term impact of the Black Death on English towns
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Medieval 'Signs and Marvels'
Historian article
Medieval ‘Signs and Marvels': insights into medieval ideas about nature and the cosmic order.
Many aspects of life in the Middle Ages puzzle the modern reader but some are stranger than others. What can possibly explain an event reported from Orford Castle, in Suffolk? This is an amazing tale and...
Medieval 'Signs and Marvels'
