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My Favourite History Place: Castle Hill, Huddersfield
Historian feature
Alison Hramiak tempts us to visit Castle Hill, south of Huddersfield, to look for traces of our long dead ancestors, to contemplate the passing of the centuries on that site and to enjoy the lovely views.
It’s often the way that we ignore what’s geographically close to us when we visit...
My Favourite History Place: Castle Hill, Huddersfield
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Out and About in Cairo
Historian feature
Nicolas Kinloch guides us round the fascinating city of Cairo.
Cairo has always been a traveller’s destination. That indefatigable explorer, ibn Battuta, arrived there in 1326, and declared that it was ‘boundless in its multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendour...extending a friendly welcome to strangers’. Most of this is...
Out and About in Cairo
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Volunteers to a man: an industrial workplace goes to war
Historian article
In this article Edward Washington explores how the Royal Mint in Sydney, Australia was affected by the First World War, through the loss of professional staff and the legacy of experiencing conflict.
The Royal Mint, Sydney, which opened in 1855 in response to the Australian gold rushes, was the first...
Volunteers to a man: an industrial workplace goes to war
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A (non-Western) history of versatility
Historian article
Waqās Ahmed broadens our perspective on where in history we might find polymaths, those who embody versatility of thought and action. While Western scholars might identify the likes of Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin as the archetype of the polymath, they have in reality existed throughout history and across...
A (non-Western) history of versatility
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On Black Lives Matter
Article
2020 has been an interesting year in many ways – both as a year to make history and one that has sought to tackle many representations of the past. The Black Lives Matter campaign that has taken on new energy across the globe in response to the killing of a...
On Black Lives Matter
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Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
Historian feature
Alf Wilkinson explores the controversial story of Maria Rye, who founded the Female Emigration Society in 1861 in order to take ‘surplus’ young ladies to Australia and New Zealand to work as teachers and governesses. As there was insufficient demand for these, she refocused her work on taking pauper children...
Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
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Sparta and war: myths and realities
Historian article
Stephen Hodkinson explains how images of ancient Sparta have been distorted and misused.
On 15 April 2017, at a violent right-wing rally in Berkeley, California, some striking ancient Greek symbols were visible amidst the swastikas and ‘Make America Great Again’ hats. Several demonstrators wore replica ‘Corinthian’ helmets, as worn by...
Sparta and war: myths and realities
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Exploring local sources
Historian article
Tim Lomas was correct when he said, in his article in the Summer 2019 edition of The Historian, that historians can see much more in medieval documents than the scribes intended.
Lay manors in Bedfordshire are a good example. Eggington manor, in the south-west, was part of a larger estate and held...
Exploring local sources
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Remember Peterloo!
Historian article
The BBC News at 10 on Saturday 5 July included an announcement that Manchester's campaign to have a memorial erected to the victims of the Peterloo Massacre had ‘got under way'. That afternoon, a workshop organised by the Peterloo Memorial campaign had encouraged members of the public to express their...
Remember Peterloo!
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Podcast: Suffrage lives, 1866 to 1914
Annual Conference Podcast 2019
When, as a researcher, I was asked to take part in the Historical Association’s Suffrage Resources project and to populate the database for it, I jumped at the chance. Who wouldn’t? It offered the opportunity to delve into the archives, reaching back in time to the symbolic beginnings of the organised...
Podcast: Suffrage lives, 1866 to 1914
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Hidden histories: landscape spotting – a brief guide
Historian article
The art of landscape spotting – identifying and interpreting visible archaeological features in the countryside – is an accessible, enlightening and fun way to explore our past. By finding these clues in the fields, roads, hedges and hills around us, we can start to piece together the biography of a...
Hidden histories: landscape spotting – a brief guide
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Moresnet: a small country in a big narrative
Historian article
Wim van Schijndel explores the intriguing story of Moresnet, a tiny enclave in Europe that existed from 1816 until 1920 between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, until it was finally annexed by Belgium at the time of the Treaty of Versailles.
A big part of our modern-day society is based...
Moresnet: a small country in a big narrative
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George Eliot and Warwickshire history
Historian article
David Paterson explains how George Eliot’s vivid memory of her childhood in north Warwickshire is revealed through her novels.
George Eliot, born 200 years ago this year, is one of our greatest novelists, born and brought up in Warwickshire, a county in which she spent the first 30 years of...
George Eliot and Warwickshire history
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Eighteenth-century Britain and its Empire
Article
The concept of an ‘English’ or even of a ‘British’ empire has been in use at least from the sixteenth century. What the term then conveyed was of course very different from what it was to convey in modern times. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, contemporaries were beginning to envisage...
Eighteenth-century Britain and its Empire
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Czech Uranium and Stalin's Bomb
Article
Z.A.B. Zeman uncovers a fateful link between Czechoslovakia’s brief monopoly of uranium in Europe and the country’s subordination to the USSR. The great uranium rush started in 1943 and lasted for about seven years. Unlike the gold rushes of the past, uranium did not promise untold riches to individuals but...
Czech Uranium and Stalin's Bomb
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Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253)
Historian article
Jack Cunningham considers a medieval philosopher, the significance of whose ideas has grown in importance through the centuries.
An appreciation of Grosseteste the thinker has not always been at its appropriate level during the almost 800 years since his death. If historians have paid attention to the great man this ...
Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253)
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Admiral Lord Mountbatten: man of science and royal role model
Historian article
Mountbatten was a controversial figure who died in tragic circumstances but Adrian Smith demonstrates that, behind his aristocratic facade, he was a very adept, talented and formative personality.
Four years have passed since the re-opening of Broadlands, the Hampshire home of Lord and Lady Brabourne. The house was subject to...
Admiral Lord Mountbatten: man of science and royal role model
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Folkestone in World War One
Historian article
Grahame Jones contributes to our determination to explore the wider involvement of the community in responding to the challenges of the Great War, in this case two inspirational women who provided refreshments for soldiers en route through Folkestone harbour.
A fading Edwardian resort and handy for that trip through the...
Folkestone in World War One
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Obituary: Asa Briggs 1921-2016
Obituary
Asa Briggs died on 15 March, aged 94, leaving a wife and four children. What a pity that he did not live quite long enough to become the first leading historian to reach 100. But he failed at little else that mattered.
He was an historian of the nineteenth and...
Obituary: Asa Briggs 1921-2016
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First Zeppelin shot down over Britain
Historian article
In the First World War Britain suddenly became vulnerable to aerial attack. Alf Wilkinson records a memorable turning-point in the battle against the Zeppelin menace.
On the night of the 2-3 September 1916 Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson became the first pilot to shoot down a Zeppelin raider over Britain. He...
First Zeppelin shot down over Britain
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Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
Historian article
‘It is often said on the other side of the water that none of the exhibitions which we send to England are purely and distinctively American', exhorted Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in an unsolicited letter of September 1884 to ‘Colonel' William Frederick Cody (1846-1917). ‘If you will take the Wild...
Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
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Magna Carta: oblivion and revival
Historian article
Magna Carta was to go through a number of revisions before it finally took its place on the statute book. Nicholas Vincent takes us through the twists and turns of the tale of the Charter's death and revival after June 1215.
The Charter issued by King John at Runnymede is...
Magna Carta: oblivion and revival
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Queen Anne
Classic Pamphlet
In this pamphlet, James Anderson Winn, author of a recent biography of Queen Anne, recommends a new approach to historians writing about this successful and popular queen. Female, overweight, and reticent, Anne has long been underestimated. Her letters, however, show how well she understood the motives of her ministers, and...
Queen Anne
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Bayeux
Historian article
Bayeux, 23 kilometres west of Caen, was the first French town to be liberated in 1944 - on 7 June in fact, the day after the landings. Yet its origins go much further back than that: its first bishop was consecrated in the fourth century. It became part of Normandy...
Bayeux
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Film: A conversation on Goethe with A.N. Wilson
Article
In Goethe: His Faustian life, award-winning biographer, critic and writer A. N. Wilson tells the spellbinding story of the life of Goethe. From his youth as a wild literary prodigy, to his later years as Germany’s most heroic intellectual figure, Wilson hones in on Goethe’s undying obsession with the work he would spend his...
Film: A conversation on Goethe with A.N. Wilson
