-
Prehistoric Bristol
Classic Pamphlet
This period is represented in the valley of the Bristol Avon by the Acheulian industries, named from the type station of St. Acheul in the Somme valley, which has yielded many ovate and pear-shaped hand-axes characteristic of the period. These industries flourished during the very long Second Interglacial phase, a...
Prehistoric Bristol
-
Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks
Historian article
Hulks – former naval ships used as prisons for those convicted of serious crime and sentenced to transportation – were intended to be a temporary solution to a penal crisis caused by the American Revolutionary Wars. These ‘schools of vice’, or ‘floating hells’ lasted 80 years, casting a shadow over...
Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks
-
Polychronicon 135: Post-modern Holocaust Historiography
Teaching History feature
The field of Holocaust studies has been hit by an intellectual earthquake whose precise magnitude and long-term consequences cannot be ascertained at this stage. In 2007 Saul Friedländer published The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945. The book has been rightly celebrated as the first victim-centred synthetic history...
Polychronicon 135: Post-modern Holocaust Historiography
-
Triumphs Show 129: Holding a live debate around an historical theme
Teaching History feature
Beheading Headlines: Holding a live debate around an historical theme
Studying the events surrounding the execution of Charles I is exciting on many levels: the first English King to be executed by his ‘people', the gory public beheading and the controversy surrounding the trial and verdict... But studying the Civil...
Triumphs Show 129: Holding a live debate around an historical theme
-
Nutshell 129: Arguing the case for keeping history at Key Stage 3
Article
Nutshell, HELP. My head wants to abandon separate subjects at Key Stage 3 and do projects linked only by content, such as ‘India', ‘Industry' or ‘Indigo' instead. SMT already stop 50% of pupils from choosing history at 13 as apparently they can't ‘achieve' in it (or can't achieve a C),...
Nutshell 129: Arguing the case for keeping history at Key Stage 3
-
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
-
Charles XII
Classic Pamphlet
The reputation of Charles XII who became king of Sweden before he was fifteen years old and had the responsibility of absolutist goverment thrust upon him within the next six months - contrary to the plans laid down for him by his father - has tended to attract political rather...
Charles XII
-
Film: Brezhnev and Détente
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film Dr Edwin Bacon blanks about the modernisation of the soviet union in the 1960s and 70s under Brezhnev, with some scholars predicting that as the East and West evolved, they would eventually converge as modern developed industrialised societies. The problem with convergence theory is that it didn’t...
Film: Brezhnev and Détente
-
Recorded webinar: Medieval manuscripts and modern lasers
Article
Modern, non-invasive scientific techniques have revolutionised knowledge of medieval inks and pigments - from the most exotic, such as lapis lazuli and Egyptian blue, to the most ordinary, indigo and ochres - and of how they were used to create magnificent illuminated manuscripts. This webinar will outline the techniques in question,...
Recorded webinar: Medieval manuscripts and modern lasers
-
Cunning Plan 190: Using art to make A-level history more accessible
Teaching History feature
Many pupils love the Horrible Histories books, television programmes and songs. Over the years a number of A-level pupils have proudly told me that it was Horrible Histories that sparked their love of the subject, and they are quick to recite the songs word for word! But it is also the...
Cunning Plan 190: Using art to make A-level history more accessible
-
Film: The Weimar Republic
Film series: Power and authority in Germany, 1871-1991
Professor Tim Grady takes us back to the final days of the First World War to examine the developing splits in German society that turned into revolutionary chasms following the country’s defeat. From this he reassesses some of the factors that led to the Weimar Republic’s collapse while also allowing...
Film: The Weimar Republic
-
Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
Article
Professor Jan Rüger joined the Virtual Branch on 9th February 2023 to talk about his book Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea, tracing a rich history of contact and conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War.
For generations this North Sea island expressed a German...
Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
-
Ensuring Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children do not feel unseen in the history classroom
Teaching History article
Richard Kerridge and Helen Snelson present a brief sequence of lessons using the life of the Gypsy woman Mary Squires as a way into the changes of industrialising Britain. More significantly, they also present a compelling rationale for why history teachers should be slotting in the stories of Gypsy, Roma...
Ensuring Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children do not feel unseen in the history classroom
-
Cunning Plan… to teach about environmental history in the medieval period
Teaching History feature
As an undergraduate, following a traditional history course, I was surprised and intrigued, one sunny summer day, to find myself reading about sunspots and studying graphs of solar activity. My reading list for an essay on the social and economic history of the fourteenth century included the work of historians...
Cunning Plan… to teach about environmental history in the medieval period
-
The Historian 166: Crime and Punishment
The magazine of the Historical Association
This edition of The Historian is free to access for all HA members. Find out about membership here.
Contents
5 Editorial (Read article)
6 Coroners, communities, and the Crown: mapping death and justice in late medieval England – Stephanie Emma Brown (Read article - open access)
11 Mercurial justice: a...
The Historian 166: Crime and Punishment
-
Two Realms and an empire: history, geography and an investigation into landscape
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The idea that subjects should abandon their ‘silos' and work together is bandied about currently a great deal - ‘subjects' and ‘silos' alliterate after all and so, of course, does the word ‘slogan'. What might...
Two Realms and an empire: history, geography and an investigation into landscape
-
Unpacking the enquiry puzzle
Teaching History article
The defining qualities of a good enquiry question have been regularly revisited by contributors to Teaching History in the 25 years since Riley first outlined what he saw as three essential characteristics. Despite these endeavours, Ben Arscott notes that the properties of a good enquiry question remain somewhat elusive. His...
Unpacking the enquiry puzzle
-
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Modern British LGBTQ+ history
Teaching History feature
While academic historians began to make important contributions to our understanding of British LGBTQ+ history in the 1970s (and, indeed, this built on historical scholarship from as early as the 1880s), the field of British queer history became properly established within university history departments and mainstream academic scholarship from the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Modern British LGBTQ+ history
-
Teaching History 197: Public History
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
03 Editorial (Read article)
04 HA Secondary News
06 HA Update: Talk more to write better
08 Beyond and behind the ‘quiet bus lady’: tracing the popular memory of Rosa Parks with Year 9 – Ed Durbin (Read article)
16 Who inherits the house? Using heritage to shape pupils’ thinking about...
Teaching History 197: Public History
-
Film: Khrushchev - Foreign Policy
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Alexander Titov (Queen's University of Belfast), looks at the early thaw in relations between the Soviet Union and the West after the death of Stalin, the resolution of outstanding issues such as the Korean War, the division of Austria, and Khruschev's resetting of relations with China and...
Film: Khrushchev - Foreign Policy
-
Teaching History 196: Demanding History
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
03 Editorial (Read article - open access)
04 HA Secondary News
06 HA Update
08 Mudlarking in the Thames: evidence, ecology and enquiry – Maryam Dorudi (Read article)
19 Britain’s forgotten colony? Why Hong Kong deserves a place in the story of empire – Ollie Barnes (Read article)
32 Triumphs Show: Year 9...
Teaching History 196: Demanding History
-
Teaching History 194: Climate and Environment
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
This edition of HA's Teaching History journal is free to download via the link at the bottom of the page (individual articles are also free to access).
For a subscription to Teaching History (published quarterly), plus access to our library of high-quality secondary history materials along with free or discounted CPD and...
Teaching History 194: Climate and Environment
-
How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Teaching History article
While history teachers (and examiners) regularly invite students to consider what cartoons or paintings reveal about contemporary attitudes to particular social or political developments, such sources are often difficult to interpret and to use appropriately. Drawing on a wealth of detailed research and a passion to support teachers and students with...
How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
-
Move Me On 195: trainee has not been given any scope to learn to plan
Teaching History feature
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On 195: trainee has not been given any scope to learn to plan
-
Film: Yeltsin and the fall of the Soviet Union
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), explores the role Yeltsin played in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Dr Bacon takes us from the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of nationalism in the new republics, and how Yeltsin became Russia’s first elected head of state....
Film: Yeltsin and the fall of the Soviet Union
