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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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Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at Key Stage 3
Article
Three years ago ( TH 99, Curriculum Planning Edition), Michael Riley illustrated ways in which history departments could exploit the increased flexibility of the revised National Curriculum.1 He showed that precisely-worded enquiry questions, positioned thoughtfully across the Key Stage, help to ensure progression, challenge and coherence. His picturesque image for...
Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at Key Stage 3
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Interpretations and history teaching
Teaching History article
Gary Howells offers us a challenge: are we sure that we are teaching the study of interpretations correctly? It is much criticised at GCSE, but do we really engage our students in the process of writing history, and in understanding how history works, from 11-14? Or do we use reductive...
Interpretations and history teaching
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Parallel catastrophes? Uniqueness, redemption and the Shoah
Teaching History article
Nicolas Kinloch’s 1998 review of Michael Burleigh’s Ethics and Extermination in Teaching History, 93, sparked a debate amongst our readers about the teaching of the Holocaust, concerning both rationales and practical approaches. Citing the damage caused to pupils’ understanding by a Spielberg view of history, he emphasised that the rationale...
Parallel catastrophes? Uniqueness, redemption and the Shoah
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Using this map and all your knowledge, become Bismarck
Teaching History article
Understanding the past is not an abstract exercise. Historical questions revolve around decisions made by real people under real pressure. As historians, we factor psychological pressure into our analysis. How, though, are we to enable our students to do the same? To study why Bismarck began a programme of overseas...
Using this map and all your knowledge, become Bismarck
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Working as a team to teach the Holocaust well: a language-centred approach
Teaching History article
Clear themes run through the work of the history department at Huntington School. A remarkably consistent emphasis on language and literacy, including work on speaking and listening of many types, is a hallmark of this sequence of six Year 9 lessons on the Holocaust, described in detail by head of...
Working as a team to teach the Holocaust well: a language-centred approach
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Polychronicon 131: At your leisure
Teaching History feature
Leisure time - like time itself - is fluid, and keeps changing its social meanings. From a ‘serious' high political perspective there is no history of leisure and leisure is trivial. Such perspectives have long lost their grip on the historical imagination, of course, and we have had histories of...
Polychronicon 131: At your leisure
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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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Disraeli, Peel and the Corn Laws: the making of a conservative reputation
Historian article
125 years after his death, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, still provides the political lode-star for generations of Conservatives. Lately, for the first time in 30 years, Disraeli's name and example has been enthusiastically evoked by the party leadership and David Cameron has projected himself as a Disraeli for the...
Disraeli, Peel and the Corn Laws: the making of a conservative reputation
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Upwards till Lepanto
Article
Ottoman society centred on the Sultan. He was lawgiver, religious official, leader in battle-and until the late sixteenth century an active field commander on campaign. The Law of Fratricide of Mehmet (Mohammed) II, 1451-81, urged each new Sultan to kill his brothers in order to produce a capable ruler and...
Upwards till Lepanto
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Mughal moments made memorable by Movie Maker
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rosalind Stirzaker has introduced some fascinating topics at Key Stage 3. Her pupils, living in Dubai, have the opportunity to study the Islamic Empire, the Mughal Empire and Mespotamia as well as many of the...
Mughal moments made memorable by Movie Maker
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The Pennsylvanian Origins of British Abolitionism
Historian article
It can have escaped the attention of very few people in the United Kingdom that 2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in British ships. Slavery itself continued to be legal in Britain and its colonies until the 1830s, while other nations continued both to...
The Pennsylvanian Origins of British Abolitionism
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Beware the serpent of Rome
Article
On 14 February 1868, the Carlisle Journal reported as follows: … two meetings were held in the Athenaeum in this city , “for the purpose of forming an auxiliary to co-operate with the Church Association in London, to uphold the principles and order of the United Church of England and...
Beware the serpent of Rome
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Teaching History 106: Citizens and Communities
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
This edition deals with the complex debate about whether history should be taught for intrinsic or extrinsic reasons. Balancing the rationaland the emotional in the teaching of contentious topics, Historical significance, Local historical enquiry, Citizenship, Teaching political concepts to post-16 students and much more...
‘Don’t worry, Mr. Trimble. We can...
Teaching History 106: Citizens and Communities
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Thomas Parkinson: the Hermit of Thirsk
Historian article
About the year 1430 the citizens of Thirsk decided that their ancient parish church of St. Mary was old-fashioned and unworthy of the developing town, so they decided to build a new one. As a result, over the next eighty years or so, they produced what Pevsner described as ‘without...
Thomas Parkinson: the Hermit of Thirsk
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England Arise! The General Election of 1945
Historian article
‘The past week will live in history for two things’, announced the Sunday Times of 29 July 1945, ‘first the return of a Labour majority to Parliament and the end of Churchill's great war Premiership.’ Most other newspapers concurred. The Daily Mirror, of 27 July, proclaimed that the 1945 general election...
England Arise! The General Election of 1945
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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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Podcast: Stalin 1928-1941
Podcast
On 15th November Dr Jane McDermid gave the first lecture in the HA's Sixth Form Lecture Series on the making of the Stalinist State at the National Archives, Kew. Click on the following links below to listen to her lecture and read the lecture notes!
Podcast: Stalin 1928-1941
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The origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Historian article
On 29 January 1949 there was a debate in the British House of Commons. When Winston Churchill, the leader of the opposition, interrupted Ernest Bevin’s history of the Palestine problem he was told by the Foreign Secretary: ‘over half a million Arabs have been turned by the Jewish immigrants into...
The origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
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Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Historian article
Much research has been devoted in recent years to Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (EH), completed in 731 at the joint monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow; but in one crucial respect little progress has been made: the editing of the text. The excellent edition published by Charles Plummer in 1896...
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People
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The Slave trade and British Abolition, 1787-1807
Historian article
In the 1780’s the British slave trade thrived. In that decade alone more than one thousand British and British colonial slave ships sailed for the slave coasts of Africa and transported more than 300,000 Africans. There was little evidence that here was a system uncertain about its economic future. If...
The Slave trade and British Abolition, 1787-1807
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The Origins of the Local Government Service
Historian article
The concept ‘local government’ dates only from the middle of the nineteenth century. ‘Local government service’ emerged later still. In 1903 Redlich and Hirst1 wrote of ‘municipal officers’, while in 1922 Robson2 preferred ‘the municipal civil service’. ‘Local government service’ perhaps derives its pedigree from its use in the final...
The Origins of the Local Government Service
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The Great Exhibition
Article
‘Of all the decades to be young in, a wise man would choose the 1850s’ concludes G.M. Young in his Portrait of An Age. His choice is understandable. Historians and contemporaries have long viewed the middle years of the century as a ‘plateau of peace and prosperity’, an ‘age of...
The Great Exhibition
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The Spanish Collection
Article
For the art historian, a thorough study of works of art, their creators and the environment in which they were produced, as well as their significance then and now, is a specialised endeavour. This, nevertheless, does not exhaust the presentation of art to contemporaries, least of all in the context...
The Spanish Collection
