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The British General Strike 1926
Classic Pamphlet
‘The General Strike is a challenge to Parliament and is the road to anarchy and ruin.' (Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister, 6th May 1926).
‘The General Council does not challenge the Constitution ... the sole aim of the Council is to secure for the miners a decent standard of life. The Council...
The British General Strike 1926
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The End of Colonial Rule in West Africa
Classic Pamphlet
The dissolution of colonial empires since the Second World War is a major theme of contemporary history, and one which will challenge historians for many years to come. There are still sharp disagreements as to how this change should be described. European scholars tend to use the term ‘decolonization' (at...
The End of Colonial Rule in West Africa
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The Battle of Waterloo: Sunday 18 June 1815
Historian article
John Morewood explores the events of 18 June 1815 in detail and asks just how accurate is our view of what happened on the field of Waterloo.
Summary
Waterloo is the most famous battle in a four-battle campaign fought from 15 June to 19 June 1815. On one side were...
The Battle of Waterloo: Sunday 18 June 1815
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The Story of the African Queen
Historian article
Where fact and fiction intercept: the story of The African Queen(s) by C.S. Forester
When the Königin Luise was hull down over the horizon and the dhow was close in-shore the lieutenant left his post and went down to the jetty to meet his senior officer. The dhow ran briskly in,...
The Story of the African Queen
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Roald Dahl and the Lost Campaign
Historian article
Following the successful filming of his book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, Roald Dahl has an international reputation as a children’s writer. There is, however, a macabre dimension to his writing underlined by his successful TV series ‘Tales of the Unexpected’. Dark episodes in Dahl’s highly successful career touched his...
Roald Dahl and the Lost Campaign
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Beware the serpent of Rome
Article
On 14 February 1868, the Carlisle Journal reported as follows: … two meetings were held in the Athenaeum in this city , “for the purpose of forming an auxiliary to co-operate with the Church Association in London, to uphold the principles and order of the United Church of England and...
Beware the serpent of Rome
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The Rainbow Circle and the New Liberalism
Historian article
The publication of the first volume of Paddy Ashdown’s Diaries in 2000 has focused renewed attention on the relationship between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party. From the first meeting between Ashdown and Tony Blair at the latter’s house on 4 September 1994, less than seven weeks after his...
The Rainbow Circle and the New Liberalism
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What's New About New Labour?
Historian article
In the 1980s it was often argued that the Labour party was finished as a major force in British politics. Yet on 1st May 1997 it won a landslide victory, securing an overall majority of 179 in parliament. Two years into its term of office, it retains a strong lead...
What's New About New Labour?
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Painted Advertisements on Houses
Article
A.D. Harvey discusses a once-familiar feature of the inner city landscape. A generation ago one often saw advertisements, or the names of commercial enterprises, painted directly on to the brickwork of old buildings. With the destruction, or renovation, of the older sections of most British towns, these advertisements are now...
Painted Advertisements on Houses
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The Great Powers in the Pacific
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet covers a very large period of history in a very important region with great detail and focus. Themes that are covered include the transition of power and dominance in the pacific region, the conflicts that frequently arose in the struggle for pacific dominance throughout the centuries, as well...
The Great Powers in the Pacific
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Cavour and Italian Unification
Classic Pamphlet
It may seem a little perverse to write a pamphlet on Cavour in 1972, the centenary year of the death of Mazzini, but no doubt there will be more than one publication on Mazzini to mark the occasion. To pretend that the two men had much in common would be...
Cavour and Italian Unification
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Attitudes to Liberty and Enslavement: the career of James Irving, a Liverpool slave ship surgeon and captain
Historian article
Prior to abolition in 1807, Britain was the world’s leading slave trading nation. Of an estimated six million individuals forcibly transported from Africa in the transatlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century, almost 2.5 million (40 per cent) were carried in British vessels.2 The contemporary attitudes and assumptions which underpinned...
Attitudes to Liberty and Enslavement: the career of James Irving, a Liverpool slave ship surgeon and captain
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Child labour in eighteenth century London
Historian article
On 1 March 1771, thirteen year-old John Davies, a London charity school boy, left his home in Half MoonAlley and made his way to Bishopsgate Street. There he joined thirteen other boys of similar age who, like him, were new recruits of the Marine Society, a charity that sent poor...
Child labour in eighteenth century London
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Film: Proto-feminism in Britain and Ireland – 1714 to 1785
Power and Freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714–2010
In Episode 11, Dr Mary Jo MacDonald of the University of Jyväskylä explores how the end of the Licensing Act, sweeping political change, and a revolution in intellectual culture opened unprecedented opportunities for women to shape political, social, and intellectual life in Britain and Ireland. The film highlights major proto‑feminist thinkers...
Film: Proto-feminism in Britain and Ireland – 1714 to 1785
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Flight from Kabul: a historical perspective
Historian article
In this article, Matt Jux-Blayney compares the British retreat from Kabul in 1842 with the most recent flight of NATO from Kabul in August 2021. Matt explores the various similarities between the two campaigns and includes personal recollections from his service in Afghanistan with the British Army.
On 6 January...
Flight from Kabul: a historical perspective
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Oxford's Literary War: Oxford University's servicemen and the Great War
Historian article
The last two decades have seen a slow shift in the academic understanding of the impact of the Great War on interwar Britain. The work of a small group of cultural historians has challenged strongly held pre-existing interpretations of the cultural impact of the Great War. However, there is still...
Oxford's Literary War: Oxford University's servicemen and the Great War
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Bertrand Russell's Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Historian article
'An attack on the United States with 10,000 megatons would lead to the death of essentially all of the American people and to the destruction of the nation.’ ‘In 1960 President Kennedy mentioned 30,000 megatons as the size of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.’ In the autumn of 1962...
Bertrand Russell's Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis
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'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
Article
Notwithstanding the tribal hatred recently shown for each other by a handful of English and Turkish football fanatics, nobody who has travelled in Turkey or taken a holiday in that country can have failed to notice the courtesy and generosity with which visitors are invariably treated. Indeed, one of the...
'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
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Football and British-Soviet Relations
Article
Following the recent ‘Euro 96’ championship, Jim Phillips looks at two earlier international football tours which had major political and ideological connotations. In November 1945 Moscow Dynamo became the first Soviet football team to visit Britain, playing in Cardiff, Glasgow and twice in London. With English, Welsh and Scottish crowds...
Football and British-Soviet Relations
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The changing convict experience: forced migration to Australia
Historian article
Edward Washington explores the story of William Noah who was sentenced to death for burglary in 1797 at the age of 43. He, and two others, were found guilty of breaking and entering the dwelling-house of Cuthbert Hilton, on the night of the 13 February. From Newgate Prison he was...
The changing convict experience: forced migration to Australia
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Gone with the Wind: a great book?
Historian article
HA President Tony Badger examines the historical context which shapes our understanding of Margaret Mitchell’s enduring novel.
I had been a historian of the American South for 50 years and like Ringbaum, I had a secret. I had never read Gone with the Wind. As I came up to retirement...
Gone with the Wind: a great book?
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Opposition and Resistance in the GDR
Historian article
A journalistic coup broke over Germany on 2 January 1978. The West German news magazine, Der Spiegel, published the first part of a longer piece in which an association calling itself the ‘Alliance of German Democratic Communists’ seriously criticized the policies of the East German Communist Party, the SED, and...
Opposition and Resistance in the GDR
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Comparing the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Jameson Raid
Historian article
Duplicated Debacles? A comparison of the 1895-96 Jameson Raid and the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion. Adam Burns and Robert Gallimore take us on two invasions, one by land and one by sea.
Following the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the rise to power of the socialist regime of Fidel...
Comparing the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Jameson Raid
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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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Tank development in the First World War
Historian article
The emergence of the tank as a further weapon of war is inextricably associated with Lincoln where various early models were developed.
By 1915 the Great War had gone just about as far as it could and for the first time, the way an entire war was fought was described...
Tank development in the First World War
