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President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
Historian article
Introduction
Shortly after noon on 20 January 2009 Barack Obama began his historic Inaugural Address as 44th President of the United States of America. On the west porch of the Capitol, home to the US Congress, and under propitiously blue skies, the first African American president spoke before more than...
President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
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Cartoons and the historian
Historian article
Many historical books contain cartoons, but in most cases these are little more than a relief from the text, and do not make any point of substance which is not made elsewhere. Political cartoons should be regarded as much more than that. They are an important historical source which often...
Cartoons and the historian
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The People's Pensions
Recorded lecture
Why did the British get pensions when they did? What part did the great social surveys (Booth and Rowntree) play? Was there something rotten at the heart of Empire? What part did fears of a Red Peril play? Was Britain slow, with Bismarck and even the Tsar providing some measures of...
The People's Pensions
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Shipwrecks, Clocks and Westminster Abbey: the story of John Harrison
Historian article
‘Poor England has lost so many men'
On 22 October 2007 an unlikely group of people were to be seen casting wreaths upon the sea off the Scilly Isles. They comprised a Chief Executive, a Naval Commander, a Science journalist and the Fourteenth Astronomer Royal (this writer). A clue which...
Shipwrecks, Clocks and Westminster Abbey: the story of John Harrison
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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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Saint Robert and the Deer
Article
It is almost a commonplace that there is an affinity between a holy man and the creatures of the wild. The archetype is St. Francis of Assisi but the phenomenon was well marked both before and after his time. I would like to consider briefly an episode in the life...
Saint Robert and the Deer
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The British Union of Fascists: the international dimension
Article
Fascism failed in Britain in the 1930s – Europe’s decade of the ‘Brown plague’. Unlike in many European countries, fascists in Britain were never a serious threat to the democratic order. This was not for want of trying, especially on the part of Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union...
The British Union of Fascists: the international dimension
