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Virtual Branch Recording: Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
Article
Jane Rogoyska tells the story of the Hôtel Lutetia, the only ‘grand’ hotel on the city’s bohemian Left Bank, serving as a meeting place for artists, musicians and politicians. André Gide took his lunch here, James Joyce lived in one of its rooms, Picasso and Matisse were regular guests. But...
Virtual Branch Recording: Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
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Cunning Plan 166: developing an enquiry on the First Crusade
Teaching History feature
"What shall I say next? We were all indeed huddled together like sheep in a fold, trembling and frightened, surrounded on all sides by enemies so that we could not turn in any direction. It was clear to us that this had happened because of our sins. A great clamour rose to the sky, not...
Cunning Plan 166: developing an enquiry on the First Crusade
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‘I am your most troublesome pauper’: disability and the New Poor Law
Historian article
In nineteenth-century England and Wales, the New Poor Law was the state’s solution for those who wouldn’t – as well as those who couldn’t – work. Even for disabled paupers, the line between the two wasn’t always clear cut. In this article, Carol Beardmore shows how those with physical disabilities...
‘I am your most troublesome pauper’: disability and the New Poor Law
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Real lives: important lessons from the childhood experiences of Harry Drabble
Historian feature
Helen Parker-Drabble shows how the experiences of her father, Harry Drabble, who was hospitalised for bovine tuberculosis as a child, remain fiercely relevant for families, medical practitioners and policymakers in twenty-first century Britain...
Real lives: important lessons from the childhood experiences of Harry Drabble
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Relief and resistance in Imre Kiralfy’s siege of Peking (1901)
Historian article
In 1901, at the height of empire, public shock at the vulnerability of British colonial interests was accompanied by public appetite for spectacular re-enactments of British battlefield victories. Robert Brown shows how one performance of the ‘Relief of the Legations’ at the Military Exhibition in Earl’s Court, London, was reshaped...
Relief and resistance in Imre Kiralfy’s siege of Peking (1901)
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Jeeves and the British Empire
Historian article
The writer P.G. Wodehouse is best remembered for his comic portrayals of the exploits of wealthy, young ‘men about town’ during the interwar years, but his writing often contained a multi-layered commentary on British society and politics, the extent of which has not yet been fully appreciated. In this article,...
Jeeves and the British Empire
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Talleyrand and the French Revolution
Historian article
In France during the turbulent decades of revolution, republic and empire around the turn of the nineteenth century, political leaders were fortunate if they kept their heads; forging any kind of lasting legacy was out of the question for most. Bucking the trend was Talleyrand, lesser-known as a revolutionary, but...
Talleyrand and the French Revolution
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Boudicca: facts, fictions and archaeology
Article
In this fascinating talk from our recent Britain and the Romans course, Professor William Bowden examines the evidence for the life of Boudicca, exploring what archaeology and classical sources can – and cannot – tell us about one of Roman Britain's most iconic figures. By separating evidence from conjecture, the...
Boudicca: facts, fictions and archaeology
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Coroners, communities, and the Crown: mapping death and justice in late medieval England
Historian article
Life in medieval cities could be violent and dangerous, and the records generated by state officials charged with regulating that violence offer invaluable insight into everyday life. Stephanie Emma Brown takes us behind the scenes of the recently launched Medieval Murder Map project, which was based on coroners’ rolls, to...
Coroners, communities, and the Crown: mapping death and justice in late medieval England
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Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville
Historian article
Justice in the early modern period was discretionary, which meant it could be both violent and deeply unfair. Elites often escaped the most severe punishments inflicted on the poor and minoritised groups. Clare Burgess shows how a Jesuit chaplain in sixteenth- century Seville used his spiritual discretion and zealous belief...
Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville
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James Macpherson: a Scottish Robin Hood
Historian article
James Macpherson led a notorious gang of robbers in late seventeenth-century Scotland, and he became infamous for robbing rich lairds to give to the poor. Anne-Marie Kilday explains how his notoriety is also significant for revealing how people in early modern Scotland could hold complex attitudes towards the Gypsy Roma...
James Macpherson: a Scottish Robin Hood
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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
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Finding Bad Bridget: the lives and crimes of Irish immigrant women in America
Historian article
From the early nineteenth century until the First World War, millions of Irish women emigrated to North America in search of better lives. Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, co-leads for the AHRC-funded Bad Bridget research project, tell us how poverty, discrimination, isolation from family as well as greed and opportunism...
Finding Bad Bridget: the lives and crimes of Irish immigrant women in America
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Out and About: Locating the Local Lockup
Historian feature
If you are arrested for a crime today, you will very likely be taken to a police station and locked in a cell while officers decide if they have enough evidence to charge you. But have you ever wondered what happened to criminals and other disorderly folk – roughs, drunks...
Out and About: Locating the Local Lockup
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Imperial spaces of a ‘miniature world’: the case of Rugby School, c.1828–1850
Historian article
English public schools in the nineteenth century were training grounds not just for society’s elites but also for careers in Britain’s imperial service. In this article, Holly Hiscox explores the ways in which schools such as Rugby provided pupils with a miniature world of domestic and professional life which prepared...
Imperial spaces of a ‘miniature world’: the case of Rugby School, c.1828–1850
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Decoding medieval pilgrimage
Historian article
Pilgrimage played a significant role in medieval life and belief. Pilgrims travelled far and wide to express their devotion to saints and their cults. Who were the pilgrims and what did pilgrimage involve? Luke Daly makes sense of this fascinating and complex phenomenon...
Decoding medieval pilgrimage
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Teaching for beginners
Multipage Article
This section is divided into three sub-sections:
2.1 What is history in schools?2.2 Historical knowledge2.3 History classroom practice
An introduction to the discipline of history in schools is covered in ‘What is history in schools?’ Beginning teachers need to learn and think about the nature and purposes of history in the school classroom...
Teaching for beginners
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Virtual Branch Recording: Locating and Mapping the Jews of Medieval Lincoln
Article
As part of a project to identify and write biographies of all of the Jews of the medieval Lincoln Jewry, Natasha Jenman, Luka Liu, and Josh Outhwaite have been working on records of Jewish property ownership in the city across the thirteenth century. This allows them to identify those individuals who will be...
Virtual Branch Recording: Locating and Mapping the Jews of Medieval Lincoln
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Film: Brezhnev's legacy
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film Dr Edwin Bacon looks back at Brezhnev’s 18 years and how is has been described as an era of stagnation, producing an appetite for change from younger leaders such as Mikail Gorbachev.
Dr Bacon reflects that this was a period of relative peace, stability and predictability which...
Film: Brezhnev's legacy
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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
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Film: Brezhnev's agenda
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film Dr Edwin Bacon talks about Brezhnev’s change in direction and approach after Khruschev, making collective leadership work and the Kosygin reforms. Whilst there were changes from the era of Khruschev, Brezhnev’s response to the Prague Spring in 1968 showed that some things had not changed. The events...
Film: Brezhnev's agenda
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Film: From Khrushchev to Brezhnev
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film Dr Edwin Bacon reflects upon the instability of the Khrushchev era and how Brezhnev positioned himself as the perfect replacement for a Soviet Communist party desperate for stability in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis. Brezhnev would be the first amongst equals looking to move forward...
Film: From Khrushchev to Brezhnev
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Film: Brezhnev's early life and career
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film Dr Edwin Bacon takes us through Brezhnev’s early life and career: his birth in Ukraine in 1906, the opportunities brought by the revolution, his role in the battle of Ukraine and his eventual arrival to the Politburo at the end of the 1950s. Dr Bacon looks at...
Film: Brezhnev's early life and career
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Film: Lenin and the Russian Civil War
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Revolution is never simple. Lenin and the Bolsheviks quickly found that not everyone in Russia or outside of it approved of their new radical agenda. Russia was plunged into a civil war of devastating circumstances. How would its new leader manage and how much were the needs of the people...
Film: Lenin and the Russian Civil War
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Film: Lenin and the birth of Soviet Russia
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Having changed the course of Russian society Lenin now needed to secure his Bolshevik survival. Unlike his predecessor he saw no need to continue with the Imperialist policies of a war in Europe. Territory could be sacrificed for control, but would promises and rhetoric be enough to govern among people...
Film: Lenin and the birth of Soviet Russia
