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Young Quills reviews 2025
The Young Quills Awards for best historical fiction for young people
The Young Quills books for each year must be published for the first time in English in the year preceding the competition – so 2024 for this year’s selection. Divided by age suitability the books are given to schools on the condition that the children and young people there write...
Young Quills reviews 2025
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The Great Debate 2025: Speeches
Multipage Article
The final was held at the Vicar’s Hall at Windsor Castle on 29 March 2025, and attended by 20 finalists from across the UK. This year, each finalist needed to have taken part in a regional competition and one of three semi-final stages.
The competition question for this year was: How...
The Great Debate 2025: Speeches
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Young Quills 2025
16th April 2025
Each year, the Historical Association runs Young Quills, a competition for published historical fiction for children and young adults (14+). The Young Quills books for each year must be published for the first time in English in the year preceding the competition – so 2024 for this year’s selection.
Our...
Young Quills 2025
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Great Debate Final 2025
14th April 2025
Winner:
Quinn Scott – Chesterton Community College, Cambridge
Runners up:
Anya Bensouiah – Kendrick School, Reading
Fred Bosley – The King’s School, Canterbury
Aimee Nelson – Bablake School, Coventry
Finalists:
Emily Tweddle, Earlston High School, Scottish Borders
Hannah Brearton, Upton Hall, Oxford
Rosie Thomson, The Maynard School, Exeter
Isabella Passarelli, Torquay Girls Grammar School,...
Great Debate Final 2025
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Young Quills 2025 – the winners
The Young Quills Awards for best historical fiction for young people
Each year, the Historical Association runs the Young Quills, a competition for published historical fiction for children and young adults (14+). The Young Quills books for each year must be published for the first time in English in the year preceding the competition – so 2024 for this year’s selection....
Young Quills 2025 – the winners
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Young Quills shortlist for 2025
The HA's annual awards for best historical fiction for young people
Each year, the Historical Association runs ‘Young Quills’, a competition for published historical fiction for children and young adults (14+). The Young Quills books for each year must be published for the first time in English in the year preceding the competition – so 2024 for this year’s selection.
Our aim...
Young Quills shortlist for 2025
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Young Historian Awards 2025 – the winners
4th September 2025
Spirit of Normandy Trust SeniorAvani De Santis [Guildford Grammar School, Western Australia]Kyle Luk [Loughborough Grammar School] Caspar Wright [Wells Cathedral School]
Spirit of Normandy Trust Key Stage 3 Anne Andrews [St Mary’s Menston Catholic Voluntary Academy, Leeds]Rafferty Ludlow-Maisey [Crypt Grammar School, Gloucester]Robert Moczynski [Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield]
Spirit of...
Young Historian Awards 2025 – the winners
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Write Your Own Historical Fiction 2025 – The winners
The HA’s writing competition for children aged 10-15 years
Take time, a place and a character or two, and you can create some of the most exciting stories ever told – and by telling a story you unleash a desire to seek knowledge, to entertain, to inform and to enrich the lives of others. Storytelling is one of the oldest...
Write Your Own Historical Fiction 2025 – The winners
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Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2025 - Dr Christine Counsell
Dr Christine Counsell
The Historical Association's Medlicott Medal 2025 was awarded to Dr Christine Counsell. The award seeks to recognise individuals from a diversity of backgrounds in their service to history. Read more about Christine, her work and her award here.
As is the custom, Dr Christine Counsell received her award and presented her...
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2025 - Dr Christine Counsell
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Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
Retracing the trajectories of young survivors in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust
Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
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The Great Debate 2026 – host a regional heat
The HA's public speaking competition open to school years 10–13
We are now looking for schools and venues across the country to host a regional heat in November, December 2025 or January 2026. If you are interested in hosting a heat, please fill out the form below.
The form will close on Sunday 15 June 2025. Successful applicants will be...
The Great Debate 2026 – host a regional heat
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Virtual Branch recording: A Life Revealed in Letters: Catalina Micaela
Article
What was life really like for a Spanish royal woman? Catalina Micaela, the younger daughter of Philip II of Spain, wrote extensively to her husband Carlo Emanrele I of Savoy giving fascinating insights into the events at court and the pressures on the families, providing a glimpse into sixteenth-century Spain and...
Virtual Branch recording: A Life Revealed in Letters: Catalina Micaela
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Virtual Branch Recording: The First King of England
Article
Æthelstan was the early medieval king whose territorial conquests and shrewd statesmanship united the peoples, languages, and cultures that would come to be known as the 'Kingdom of the English.' In this panoramic talk, David Woodman draws on his research and recent book to create a portrait of this immensely...
Virtual Branch Recording: The First King of England
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Recorded webinar: Embracing messiness: the case for returning to disciplinary thinking in history classrooms
Webinar series: Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Session 1: Embracing messiness: the case for returning to disciplinary thinking in history classrooms
In recent years, disciplinary thinking has been somewhat overlooked as the 'what' of curriculum has taken the front seat for many schools. This introductory session will explain the rationale for...
Recorded webinar: Embracing messiness: the case for returning to disciplinary thinking in history classrooms
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Recorded webinar: Invisible assessment within an enquiry
Webinar series: Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Webinar series: Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Session 1: Invisible assessment within an enquiry
This session explores the constant, routine assessment that goes on throughout the history lessons that make up a single enquiry – assessment that forms such a natural part of history teaching that it’s sometimes...
Recorded webinar: Invisible assessment within an enquiry
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Write Your Own Historical Fiction Competition 2026
The Historical Association Historical Fiction Prize
Please note: entries for this year’s competition have now closed. Winners will be announced by the end of October 2026.
Each year we are so impressed by the ever-increasing number and standard of entries we receive around such a wide range of historical periods and settings. You can take a look at...
Write Your Own Historical Fiction Competition 2026
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Webinar series: Coherence at Key Stage 4
HA webinar series for subject leaders and teachers of history
What does this series cover?
This series of webinars will consider coherence at Key Stage 4. We will reflect on using sequencing to establish coherence, how different categories of coherence can be used to inform our planning and delivery of GCSE, and how meaningful approaches to assessment will allow pupils’...
Webinar series: Coherence at Key Stage 4
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Virtual Branch recording: The Maginot Line
Article
Why did the the Maginot Line – that marvel of 1930s engineering with its miles of fortifications and bunkers to deter German invasion – fail so spectacularly in 1940?
Its vast underground forts were designed to withstand artillery and chemical attack, yet France fell in just six weeks, leaving the Line as a symbol...
Virtual Branch recording: The Maginot Line
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On-demand webinar: Helping the past take shape with historical enquiry
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Session 5: Helping the past take shape with historical enquiry
This session focuses into enquiry and on second order concepts. It offers practical advice to how second order concepts can be introduced in a way that is historically rigorous. We will explicitly address...
On-demand webinar: Helping the past take shape with historical enquiry
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On-demand webinar: Historical writing
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Session 4: Historical writing
This session focuses on how we can support our students to write like historians. We will explain why PEE models and other simplistic frameworks actually limit our students and instead we should look to the work of historians as...
On-demand webinar: Historical writing
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On-demand webinar: Keeping sources messy
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Session 2: Keeping sources messy
This session looks into how source work has often been too tidy in the classroom setting and the reasons behind this. It will explore a different approach to working with sources and evidence and give practical approaches to exemplify what...
On-demand webinar: Keeping sources messy
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On-demand webinar: A year in assessment
Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Webinar series: Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Session 5: A year in assessment
This session will put forward a couple of examples of what meaningful and useable assessment could look like across a school year at Key Stage 3. The session will explore the range of...
On-demand webinar: A year in assessment
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On-demand webinar: Assessing the historical parts
Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Webinar series: Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Session 2: Assessing the historical parts
This session will explore how history teachers can isolate and assess individual components, or parts, of pupils’ historical knowledge, but without reducing this to an assessment of isolated facts. The session will include examples...
On-demand webinar: Assessing the historical parts
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On-demand webinar: A history teacher’s 'markbook'
Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Webinar series: Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Session 6: A history teacher’s 'markbook'
This session will consider what it might be most useful for history teachers to keep a record of over the course of a year. Every time we read pupils’ work or listen to...
On-demand webinar: A history teacher’s 'markbook'
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On-demand webinar: Assessing the historical whole
Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Webinar series: Meaningful and useable assessment in the secondary history classroom
Session 4: Assessing the historical whole
This session will set out a range of tasks and questions, beyond answering an enquiry question, that require pupils to draw on the knowledge they have built cumulatively throughout the curriculum. The session will...
On-demand webinar: Assessing the historical whole
