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The Friar's Bush
Article
Nothing on earth would have persuaded me to enter the place… it was the house of the dead. Paul Henry, artist (1876-1958)
The Friar's Bush cemetery on the Stranmillis Road in Belfast may only be two acres in size, but its history is far bloodier and grislier than you would...
The Friar's Bush
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Lloyd George & Gladstone
Article
Lloyd George, who died sixty years ago on 26 March 1945, grew up and began his Parliamentary career in Queen Victoria's reign. In taking up a major Welsh issue, disestablishment of the Church of Wales, he memorably clashed with William Ewart Gladstone, perhaps the greatest of all Liberal Prime Ministers....
Lloyd George & Gladstone
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William Vernon Harcourt
Article
2004 marks the centenary of the death of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, on 30 September 1904, and this provides an opportunity to consider the extent to which Harcourt's beliefs and political attitudes are still relevant today. Although he is now almost forgotten Harcourt was regarded as a major figure in...
William Vernon Harcourt
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Stanley Baldwin's reputation
Historian article
Falsification of history is normally associated with dictatorships rather than liberal democracies. Yet tendentious accounts of the recent past are part of the armoury of all types of political debate. Such manipulation usually has only a limited and short-term influence, because it is neutralised by different political parties offering contending...
Stanley Baldwin's reputation
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The Great Exhibition
Article
‘Of all the decades to be young in, a wise man would choose the 1850s’ concludes G.M. Young in his Portrait of An Age. His choice is understandable. Historians and contemporaries have long viewed the middle years of the century as a ‘plateau of peace and prosperity’, an ‘age of...
The Great Exhibition
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Queen Victoria as a Politician
Article
Even had Queen Victoria not presided over the achievements of the age which bears her name, her career would still hold a fascination for the historian. She was, for one thing, the solitary woman in a male political world. She was possessed of a personality at once perceptive and simple,...
Queen Victoria as a Politician
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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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British Christians and European Integration
Historian article
Despite Britain’s longstanding membership of the European Union, the question of ‘Europe’ continues to loom large in the nation’s politics. Whilst the economic pros and cons of Britain ‘joining’ the euro might be understood by only a select few, that issue provides for the many an opportunity to debate Britain’s...
British Christians and European Integration
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Lord Palmerston
Historian article
Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) has long interested (and confused) historians. A man of contradictions and paradoxes, he seemed both to embody modern Victorian Britain, and yet at the same time stand as a potent symbol of what had been lost.
Lord Palmerston
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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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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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'Spy Fever' in Britain, 1900 to 1914
Historian article
The decade and a half prior to the First World War saw Britain experience a virulent, some might say sordid phenomenon that has been referred to as ‘spy fever.’ This article traces the roots of spy fever, and examines its nature, before assessing its effects on Britain between 1900 and...
'Spy Fever' in Britain, 1900 to 1914
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Two Babies That Could Have Changed World History
Historian article
'At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; re-covered same for your arrival. Congratulations.’ This telegram was sent from Luxor on the 6th November 1922 by Howard Carter to his coarchaeologist Lord Carnarvon in Britain. It started the Tut·ankh·Amen story which led to a...
Two Babies That Could Have Changed World History
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Women and Gender in the French Wars
The Napoleonic Wars
In this podcast Dr Louise Carter critically examines the role of women in Britain during the French Revolution. During these wars, women were typically called on for army cooking, laundry, nursing and spying, and as such were considered part of the war machine. While women in the French wars accounted for...
Women and Gender in the French Wars
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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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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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Cholera and the Fight for Public Health Reform in Mid-Victorian England
Article
Of the many social changes that occurred during the Victorian age, public health reform is widely agreed to be one of the most significant. In the early Victorian era the vast majority of Britons drank water from murky ponds and rivers, carried to their dwellings in buckets; and their excrement...
Cholera and the Fight for Public Health Reform in Mid-Victorian England
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Cooling Memories? Why We Still Remember Scott And Shackleton
Historian article
Just along from the grand lobby of the new British Library, on the left up a broad staircase, there is a half concealed doorway. Walk through the doors and you enter a low gallery, dimly lit and filled with expansive display cases. There is always a hush in this room...
Cooling Memories? Why We Still Remember Scott And Shackleton
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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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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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Isaac Butt and Irish Nationality
Article
Alan O’Day reviews and reassesses the career of the major Irish Nationalist figure before Charles Stewart Parnell. Once the most respected man in Irish nationalist circles, Isaac Butt became merely a footnote in Anglo-Irish history after his death on 5 May 1879. Yet, from the mid-1860s until he died his...
Isaac Butt and Irish Nationality
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From Disraeli to Callaghan: Britain 1879 - 1979
Historian article
A previously unpublished survey of British history by A.J.P. Taylor. It is a characteristic piece, though marked by gloom about the then recent inflation. Introduced by Historical Association President Chris Wrigley.
From Disraeli to Callaghan: Britain 1879 - 1979
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Cartooning King Cotton
Historian article
While cartoons have been widely used by historians of ‘High Politics’ or diplomacy, they have been used less often by social historians. Alan Fowler and Terry Wyke examine a source for the social history of the Lancashire cotton industry. Cartoons have long held a fascination for historians, though when using...
Cartooning King Cotton
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British Cooperation with the Zionist Agency in Palestine 1940-42
Article
Nicholas Hammond provides an account of a little known Strategic Operations Executive intervention in the Middle East. In the summer of 1940, when Italy joined Germany, it was clear that attacks on the British position in the Middle East might be made from Italian bases in Africa and in Rhodes...
British Cooperation with the Zionist Agency in Palestine 1940-42
