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Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King
Historian article
The National Portrait Gallery in London is home to many thousands of portraits, photographs and sculptures of the great and the good, as well as those who travelled on the darker side of history.
In 2007 it hosted a small exhibition in the Porter Gallery entitled Between Worlds: Voyagers to...
Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King
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The ideological contribution of 'The Times' in favour of motherhood in Great Britain between 1910–1920
Historian article
During the early years of the twentieth century, the New Liberals spread a political ideology which was much closer to socialism than to Victorian liberalism. Indeed, they preached State intervention in favour of social welfare, national prosperity and imperialistic strength; that social policy which logically required extra care and increased...
The ideological contribution of 'The Times' in favour of motherhood in Great Britain between 1910–1920
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Joseph Priestley's American Dream
Historian article
Joseph Priestley ended his days in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. This is one of the most delightful spots in the eastern United States. It is situated at the confluence of the North Western and North Eastern branches of the Susquehanna, one of the great rivers of North America, which winds its way...
Joseph Priestley's American Dream
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1939 After Sixty Years
Article
Historians view major anniversaries with a measure of ambivalence. We know that they are artificial, that it is merely a convenient fiction to think that the passage of a round number of years provides a privileged vantage point from which to review the significance of a given event. Yet we...
1939 After Sixty Years
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The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
Article
Dr Jacqueline Beaumont Hughes considers some aspects of the role of the Press during the Boer War. The conflict between Great Britain and the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State which slipped into war in October 1899 was to become the most significant since the Crimean war. It...
The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
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Britain's Olympic visionary
Historian article
Forty-six years before the modern Olympics began, the small Shropshire market town of Much Wenlock was the seemingly unlikely setting for the establishment of an ‘Olympian Games'. Commencing in 1850, they were to become an annual festival in the town. The architect of this sporting enterprise was a local surgeon...
Britain's Olympic visionary
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Russian Revolution: Social Movements between the Revolutions Feb-Oct 1917
Lecture
On the 29th November Dr Jane McDermid gave the second of her lectures on the Russian Revolution, at the Weston Theatre, Manchester. John Laver, Principal Examiner in History at AQA also gave some invaluable advice on how to answer A Level History Exam questions.
Click the links below to access their lecture notes>>>...
Russian Revolution: Social Movements between the Revolutions Feb-Oct 1917
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Radiating the Revolution: Agitation in the Russian Civil War 1917-21
Article
When the Bolsheviks seized power in what was essentially a carefully organised coup d’état in October 1917, they seized control only of the levers of central power in the then capital, Petrograd, which had already become the centre of working-class discontent. What they most emphatically did not do was to...
Radiating the Revolution: Agitation in the Russian Civil War 1917-21
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Landowners and their motives for change at the Suffolk village of Culford between 1793 and 1903
Historian article
Isabel Jones from Thomas Mills High School at Framlingham was the winner of the Young Historian Award for Local History [16-19] in 2006. The Director of the Young Historian Project, Trevor James, has edited her winning essay. It has been shortened and the footnotes removed, to enable it to fit...
Landowners and their motives for change at the Suffolk village of Culford between 1793 and 1903
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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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Why did the Dome fail?
Historian article
History gives us a basis for understanding the groups which people belong to, the countries people live in and the institutions which govern them. It provides a sense of continuity and identity. However, on 31 December 1999 the Queen and Prime Minister opened an exhibition which made no reference to...
Why did the Dome fail?
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The Duke of Wellington and the little man on the cob
Article
On 24th March, 1843, the painter, Benjamin Robert Haydon, wrote down an odd story, told to him earlier that evening by his friend, the sculptor, John Carew. The anecdote was already at least three removes from its original source, the Duke of Wellington, and concerned events that had taken place...
The Duke of Wellington and the little man on the cob
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The Last Duke of Lorraine
Article
The Place Stanislas in Nancy has a high reputation. But expectations are far surpassed as one surveys the beautifully proportioned square, with its imposing buildings such as the Hôtel de Ville and the Governor's Palace, its Arc de Triomphe and its magnificent iron work. It is a reminder of how...
The Last Duke of Lorraine
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Echoes of Tsushima
Historian article
In 2005 East Asian regional strategy is once again a hot topic for policy makers, diplomats and journalists. As China begins to reassert herself regionally and as her economy revives to challenge conceptions of her place in the world, Japan, Russia, Korea (North and South) and the United States are...
Echoes of Tsushima
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How Nelson Became a Hero
Article
The fittest man in the world for the command' of the Mediterranean, Lord Minto declared of Horatio Nelson on 24 April 1798, following Nelson's inventive assault on Spanish ships off Cape St. Vincent. 'Admiral Nelson's victory [at the Nile]… is one of the most glorious and comprehensive victories ever achieved...
How Nelson Became a Hero
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Pressure and Persuasion Canadian agents and Scottish emigration, c. 1870- c. 1930
Article
In February, 1907, the Canadian government’s most northerly regional emigration office in the British Isles opened for business in Aberdeen. Located near the city centre, only a stone’s throw from the docks and the railway station, it soon fulfilled the expectation that it would capture the attention of a large...
Pressure and Persuasion Canadian agents and Scottish emigration, c. 1870- c. 1930
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Heritage and History
Article
Moves to protect and record the historic environment began at the turn of the 20th century with the establishment of the National Trust in 1895, the Victoria County History in 1899, and the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments for England in 1908. The VCH took the antiquarians’ task onto a...
Heritage and History
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Oscar Wilde: the myth of martydom
Historian article
Over a century after his death, interest in Oscar Wilde and his work is at flood tide, with unprecedented levels of publication and research about Wilde and his work. Wildean studies proliferate, much in languages other than English. Recent translations of Wilde’s work have included Romanian, Hebrew, Swedish and Catalan,...
Oscar Wilde: the myth of martydom
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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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The Gallipoli Memorial, Eltham
Historian article
On April 13 2000 the Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend Richard Harris, gave the final Gallipoli Memorial Lecture in the Gallipoli Memorial Chapel at Holy Trinity Church, Eltham. The National Gallipoli Memorial was established there due to the effort and enthusiasm of Holy Trinity’s Vicar, the Reverend Henry Hall,...
The Gallipoli Memorial, Eltham
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A Social History of the Welsh Language
Historian article
When the historian Peter Burke wrote in 1987 ‘It is high time for a social history of language’, he could scarcely have imagined that the first to meet the challenge would be the Welsh. In November 2000 the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, a research...
A Social History of the Welsh Language
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'Wanted, The Elusive Charlie Peace': A Sheffield Killer Of The 1870s As Popular Hero
Historian article
On 28 November 1876, William and John Habron, Irish brothers habitually in trouble with the police, were tried at Manchester Assizes for the murder three months before of Police Constable Nicholas Cock (on the basis of ‘scientific’ footprint evidence at the scene of the crime). The jury found 19 year-old...
'Wanted, The Elusive Charlie Peace': A Sheffield Killer Of The 1870s As Popular Hero
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The Military Historian and the Popular Image of the Western Front, 1914-1918
Article
Ian Beckett reviews recent revisionist interpretations of the Western Front. English teachers have much to answer for in terms of the enduring popular image of the Great War. Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves are still pressed regularly into action as if they could possibly stand representatives of the...
The Military Historian and the Popular Image of the Western Front, 1914-1918
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Film: Khrushchev - Background
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Alexander Titov (Queen's University of Belfast), provides a profile of Khrushchev’s background and personality and how these influenced his politics and ideas.
Dr Titov takes us on a journey from Khrushchev's peasant beginnings in Kursk, his rapid rise in the communist party, his role in the purges, to...
Film: Khrushchev - Background
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Film: Lenin's legacy
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
With his body was embalmed and building high statues were erected to him Lenin’s memory seemed secured for ever. Yet how did his memory and his actual legacy differ? Did he really set the course for a future better Russia, or were his ideas of revolution better on paper than...
Film: Lenin's legacy
