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Lord North: The Noble Lord in the Blue Ribbon
Classic Pamphlet
In the last weeks of his life Lord North, we are told, expressed anxiety about his place in history - ‘how he stood and would stand in the world'. This, he owned, ‘might be a weakness, but he could not help it'. It was a weakness one suspects that he...
Lord North: The Noble Lord in the Blue Ribbon
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Philip II of Spain: The Prudent King
Article
On the eve of the 400th anniversary of Philip II’s death James Casey rejects the traditional portrayal of the Spanish ruler as a cruel despot and argues his achievements were more the result of an extraordinary sense of duty fully in tune with the hopes and aspirations of his people....
Philip II of Spain: The Prudent King
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Catherine de Medici & the Ancien Regime
Classic Pamphlet
Catherine de Medici is one of the most controversial figures of the early modern period. Her name has come to symbolize her age and both have long retained an exceptionally powerful emotive force. Consequently they have attracted many writers primarily seeking to apportion blame for the sombre events of the...
Catherine de Medici & the Ancien Regime
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The Armada Campaign of 1588
Classic Pamphlet
Between 1585 and 1588 a state of undeclared war existed between England and Spain. During the course of those years, Philip II devised a plan for the 'Enterprise of England'. It was probably the most ambitious military operation of the sixteenth century: a massive invasion to be mounted jointly by...
The Armada Campaign of 1588
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Henry VIII
Classis Pamphlet
What shall we think of Henry VIII? However that question has been or may be answered, one reply is apparently impossible. Not even the most resolute believer in deterministic interpretations of history seems able to escape the spell of that magnificent figure; I know of no book on the age...
Henry VIII
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The Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)
Historian article
The Exclusion Crisis in the reign of King Charles II was a fierce struggle over the issue of whether the King’s Catholic brother James should be the heir to the throne. At the same time, circumstances promoted an outpouring of polemical pamphlets on a massive scale. Here Gregory Gifford examines...
The Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)
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Film: Henry VIII and Tudor Royal Authority
Development of Tudor Royal Authority film series
In this film, Tracy Borman, discusses the life and career of Henry VIII. Tracy examines how Henry VIII evolved from a pleasure loving prince, raised as Henry VII's 'spare heir', to becoming a king who would come to redefine England as a nation.
Film: Henry VIII and Tudor Royal Authority
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Film series: Power and Freedom in Britain and Ireland, 1714–2010
New HA film series
From royal courts to radical protests, from industrial revolutions to global empires – this compelling new film series traces the dramatic evolution of power, rights, and freedom across three centuries of British and Irish history.
We will trace Britain and Ireland’s transformation from 1714 to 2010, unpacking power struggles, social revolutions, and...
Film series: Power and Freedom in Britain and Ireland, 1714–2010
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Penruddock's Rising 1655
Classic Pamphlet
Three hundred years ago John Penruddock of Compton Chamberlayne and a dozen other brave men paid with their lives for their failure to raise the West Country in the name of King Charles II against the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. They had been in arms barely four days, and their...
Penruddock's Rising 1655
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The New History of the Spanish Inquisition
Article
Helen Rawlings reviews the recent literature which has prompted a fundamental reappraisal of the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition — first established in 1478 in Castile under Queen Isabella I and suppressed in 1834 by Queen Isabella II — has left its indelible mark on the whole course of Spain’s...
The New History of the Spanish Inquisition
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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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Film: Henry VII and Tudor Royal Authority
Development of Tudor Royal Authority film series
In this film Professor Steven Gunn, Merton College, University of Oxford, looks at the life and reign of Henry VII and examines the role and significance of religion, foreign relations, domestic politics and the nobility on Henry's establishment of the Tudor dynasty.
If you're unable to see the film below, please use...
Film: Henry VII and Tudor Royal Authority
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Jacobitism
Classic Pamphlet
In recent years, the debate over the nature, extent, and influence of the Jacobite movement during the 70 years following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 has become one of the new growth industries among professional historians, spawning scholarly quarrels almost as ferocious as those which characterised ‘the Cause' itself.The term...
Jacobitism
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Presenting Naseby
Historian article
The summer of 2007 saw the completion of new visitor facilities on and near the battlefield of Naseby. The two locations are the first to be created since the Cromwell Monument was finished in 1936 and they stand more than 5km (3 miles) apart, one of them 2km south-east of...
Presenting Naseby
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A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
Historian article
The Elizabethan Reformation in Staffordshire had a shallow seedbed. The radical reformers of the 1540s had greeted the conversion of the county with a mixture of high hopes and hyperbole. The East Anglian preacher and disciple of Latimer, Thomas Becon, wrote a treatise The Iewel of Ioye urging that itinerant...
A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
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Interpreting an early seventeenth-century cottage at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum
Historian article
The Weald & Downland Open Air Museum (WDOAM), which opened to the public in 1970, is one of the leading museums of historic buildings and rural life in the United Kingdom. It has a collection of nearly 50 historic buildings - domestic, agricultural and industrial - dating from the thirteenth...
Interpreting an early seventeenth-century cottage at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum
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Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
Article
Oliver Cromwell’s death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivalled turmoil and confusion in English history. In less than two years, there were close to ten changes of government; rival armies of Englishmen faced each other across the Scottish border; and the Long Parliament was finally dissolved after two decades.
Why...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
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History Abridged: Language and the African continent
Historian feature
History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. Think Horrible Histories for grownups (without the songs and music). See all History Abridged articles
Africa is a huge continent...
History Abridged: Language and the African continent
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My Favourite History Place: Llanelly House and Saint Elli’s Church
Historian feature
There are so many delightful places of historical interest in Wales that it is very difficult to select just one or two as favourites but among contenders must be those visited by the Pontllanfraith Branch of the Gwent Historical Association in August 2018...
My Favourite History Place: Llanelly House and Saint Elli’s Church
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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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Kangxi and Louis XIV
Historian article
Recently the French and Chinese governments have joined together in a nostalgic reflection on cultural interactions between King Louis XIV and Emperor Kangxi in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. As Sean Heath explains here, these modern reflections are particularly interesting for an aspect of the relationship which they...
Kangxi and Louis XIV
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Update: Revisiting the Court of King Charles I
Historian feature
The reputation of kings, as with all political figures, is problematical. It would be surprising if it were any other way. Yet, the monarchy of Charles I remains as controversial as ever. In this article, Michael Questier looks at two diametrically opposed contemporary accounts of monarchical authority in the Stuart...
Update: Revisiting the Court of King Charles I
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Out and about in Zanzibar
Historian article
Joe Wilkinson takes us on a tour of the island of Zanzibar, where the slave trade continued long after the British abolished it.
Mention Zanzibar and most people will think of an Indian Ocean paradise, perfect for honeymooners, relaxing on the popular pristine white north-eastern beaches of Bwejuu and Paje,...
Out and about in Zanzibar
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Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
Historian article
The late Frank Ellis was working on a full biography of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, at the time of his death in 2007. He had contributed a life of Wilmot to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography which appeared in 2004. In it he wrote that ‘on 21 November...
Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
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The Unfortunate Captain Peirce
Historian article
An apprentice biographer researches the career of an eighteenth-century sea captain
On a cold January afternoon in 1986, my neighbour announced that he intended to go to Dorset's Purbeck coast that night. Puzzled, I asked why. He explained it was the 200th anniversary of the wreck of the East Indiaman,...
The Unfortunate Captain Peirce
