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Film: Lenin and the birth of Soviet Russia
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Having changed the course of Russian society Lenin now needed to secure his Bolshevik survival. Unlike his predecessor he saw no need to continue with the Imperialist policies of a war in Europe. Territory could be sacrificed for control, but would promises and rhetoric be enough to govern among people...
Film: Lenin and the birth of Soviet Russia
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HA Podcast Series: James VI & I to Anne
James VI & I to Anne
In this series of podcasts we look at British and Irish History from the Union of the Crowns to Queen Anne.
This series features: Mr Simon Healy, Dr Frank Tallett, Professor Jackie Eales, Dr Andrew Hopper, Professor Michael Braddick, Dr Jason Peacey, Professor Peter Gaunt, Professor Barry Coward, Professor John...
HA Podcast Series: James VI & I to Anne
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Podcast Series: William I to Henry VII
Multipage Article
An HA Podcasted History featuring Professor David Bates and Professor Nicholas Vincent of the University of East Anglia, Dr Philip Morgan of Keele University, Professor Mark Ormrod of the University of York, Dr James Davis of Queens University Belfast, Professor Michael Hicks of the University of Winchester, Dr Sean Cunningham of...
Podcast Series: William I to Henry VII
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Podcast Series: The Tudors
Multipage Article
An HA Podcasted History of the Tudors featuring Dr Sue Doran, Dr Steven Gunn, Dr Michael Everett & Dr Anna Whitelock.
Podcast Series: The Tudors
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Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks
Historian article
Hulks – former naval ships used as prisons for those convicted of serious crime and sentenced to transportation – were intended to be a temporary solution to a penal crisis caused by the American Revolutionary Wars. These ‘schools of vice’, or ‘floating hells’ lasted 80 years, casting a shadow over...
Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks
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Film: Brezhnev and Détente
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film Dr Edwin Bacon blanks about the modernisation of the soviet union in the 1960s and 70s under Brezhnev, with some scholars predicting that as the East and West evolved, they would eventually converge as modern developed industrialised societies. The problem with convergence theory is that it didn’t...
Film: Brezhnev and Détente
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Out and About: Charles Darwin, a voyage of discovery
Historian feature
Dave Martin follows Charles Darwin’s journey from university back to his birthplace, Shrewsbury.
Cambridge
The bronze statue of Darwin as a young man perches elegantly on the arm of a garden bench in the grounds of Christ’s College, Cambridge where he was a student from 1829 to 1831. Of this...
Out and About: Charles Darwin, a voyage of discovery
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Film: The Weimar Republic
Film series: Power and authority in Germany, 1871-1991
Professor Tim Grady takes us back to the final days of the First World War to examine the developing splits in German society that turned into revolutionary chasms following the country’s defeat. From this he reassesses some of the factors that led to the Weimar Republic’s collapse while also allowing...
Film: The Weimar Republic
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Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy
Historian article
The murder of America’s thirty-fifth president is often regarded as one of the key events in the recent history of the United States. Numerous conspiracy theories have made it appear more complex, and more mysterious, than was in fact the case.
No event in recent American history has been more comprehensively...
Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy
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Real Lives: Beatrice Alexander
Historian feature
Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...
Real Lives: Beatrice Alexander
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My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
Historian feature
The Tenement Museum is not remotely like any museum I had previously visited. It is an old tenement building where generations of New York migrants lived and loved, worked and had families before moving both on and out. The Tenement Museum tells the story of the Lower East Side through the...
My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
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Joan Vaux: a remarkable Tudor lady
Historian article
Joanna Hickson is a hugely successful novelist, specialising in historical fiction, and she describes herself as feeling that she actually lives in the fifteenth century. For readers of The Historian she explores and explains how she developed her understanding and knowledge of a highly significant Tudor woman who is a central figure in two of...
Joan Vaux: a remarkable Tudor lady
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Real Lives: Anna Wessels Williams (1863–1954)
Historian feature
Patrick J Pead writes about a truly remarkable woman whose contribution to advances in medicine deserves far wider recognition.
Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live...
Real Lives: Anna Wessels Williams (1863–1954)
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What did ‘Mature Socialism’ mean for the Soviet Union?
Historian article
David Shipp analyses the state of socialism in the Soviet Union, from Brezhnev to Chernenko.
‘What is he thinking of? Reform, reform. Who needs it, and who can understand it? We need to work better, that is the only problem.’
These reported words of Leonid Brezhnev epitomise the view of the period...
What did ‘Mature Socialism’ mean for the Soviet Union?
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Film series: The African-American Civil Rights Movement
Film: An introduction to the African-American Civil Rights Movement
The US civil rights battles of the latter half of the twentieth century are a common part of popular culture - and yet the detail is often overlooked in favour of the headlines. It is a positive step that so many of us now know the names of Rosa Parks...
Film series: The African-American Civil Rights Movement
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My Favourite History Place: The Musée Carnavalet, Paris
Historian article
Until it was overtaken in the twentieth century by Berlin and Moscow, Paris was the political, cultural and revolutionary hub around which Europe revolved. When the revolutionary Parisian crowd trudged out to Versailles in 1789 to attack the chateau and bring the king and his family back to the capital, they...
My Favourite History Place: The Musée Carnavalet, Paris
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The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean
Historian article
The Duchy of Courland’s attempts to establish outposts in the Caribbean and Africa were not the only Baltic ventures across the Atlantic during the seventeenth century. However, the expeditions of the small vassal dukedom were possibly the most unlikely. The article introduces the motivations behind the Couronian colonial project, as...
The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean
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Harriet Kettle, Victorian rebel
Historian article
Harriet Kettle had a remarkable life. She was on the receiving end of everything that the institutions of social control in Victorian England could throw at her, but resisted, survived and fought back.
Harriet’s defiance earned her references in the records of a workhouse, two prisons, two asylums and, in...
Harriet Kettle, Victorian rebel
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Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns
Historian article
Trevor James offers a case study in how to define and identify inns as part of the historic urban environment.
Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns had a remarkable and formative effect on its urban landscape, an effect which still endures into modern times. Topographers and...
Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns
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Capturing public opinion during the Paris Commune of 1871
Historian article
In the year of its 150th anniversary, Jason Jacques Willems offers his thoughts on the importance of centrist opinion to our understanding of the Paris Commune.
2021 is the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, when a revolutionary Parisian movement was pitted against the French government. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870...
Capturing public opinion during the Paris Commune of 1871
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the English Reformation
Teaching History feature
Since the first stirrings of religious reform in the sixteenth century, people have been writing the history of the Reformation, debating what happened and why it happened. John Foxe arguably became the first historian of the English Reformation when he published Actes and Monuments in 1563. Better known as ‘The...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the English Reformation
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Legacies of the Cement Armada
Historian article
Steven Pierce writes about Nigeria, long known for its flamboyant corruption, some of which stems from accidents of history. Its true international notoriety emerged in 1974–75, when half the world’s concrete supply was mysteriously diverted to the port of Lagos, paralysing it for a year. This article examines how the press coverage...
Legacies of the Cement Armada
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What did it mean to be a city in early modern Germany?
Historian article
Alexander Collin examines the significance of cities within the Holy Roman Empire in early modern times. With a strong political identity of their own, cities were at the heart of the Empire’s economy and, also, centres of theological and social change.
If you have ever read a description of a...
What did it mean to be a city in early modern Germany?
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Disease and healthcare on the Isle of Man
Historian article
Caroline Smith provides a perspective, past and present, of the experiences of epidemics on the Isle of Man.
In recent times health has been at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Epidemics and pandemics are not new, but the Covid-19 outbreak is probably the first to have such a noticeable effect...
Disease and healthcare on the Isle of Man
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Real Lives: Surviving the War in the Soviet Union: recollections of a child deportee
Historian feature
This 'Real Lives' piece is based on a series of interviews Annette Ormanczyk carried out in 2019 with Mrs Irena Persak, who was deported as a five-year-old child with her family in February 1940. As well as offering a fascinating personal account of life in the Soviet Union during the Second...
Real Lives: Surviving the War in the Soviet Union: recollections of a child deportee
