-
History Abridged: Publishing
Historian feature
History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles
For centuries the only way the written word could be communicated was by it being...
History Abridged: Publishing
-
Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
Historian feature
Alf Wilkinson explores the controversial story of Maria Rye, who founded the Female Emigration Society in 1861 in order to take ‘surplus’ young ladies to Australia and New Zealand to work as teachers and governesses. As there was insufficient demand for these, she refocused her work on taking pauper children...
Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
-
Perfect liberty and uproar: a short case study
Historian article
Edward Washington gives us a fascinating insight into life on an emigration ship – the John Knox – taking a group of orphan girls to Sydney, through a letter written after the voyage by the man charged with improving their education during the sea voyage.
After his arrival in Sydney...
Perfect liberty and uproar: a short case study
-
The last battle: Bomber Command’s veterans and the fight for remembrance
Historian article
Frances Houghton examines how and why the popular memory of the Second World War continues to be contested.
Early on the morning of Monday 21 January 2019, still-wet white gloss paint was discovered to have been thrown across the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park. The bronze sculpture of a...
The last battle: Bomber Command’s veterans and the fight for remembrance
-
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?
-
Real Lives: Alice Daye: mother of the English book trade
Historian feature
Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...
Real Lives: Alice Daye: mother of the English book trade
-
Sparta and war: myths and realities
Historian article
Stephen Hodkinson explains how images of ancient Sparta have been distorted and misused.
On 15 April 2017, at a violent right-wing rally in Berkeley, California, some striking ancient Greek symbols were visible amidst the swastikas and ‘Make America Great Again’ hats. Several demonstrators wore replica ‘Corinthian’ helmets, as worn by...
Sparta and war: myths and realities
-
Peterloo August 1819: the English Uprising
Historian article
Robert Poole, historical consultant to the ‘Peterloo 200’ commemorations in and around Manchester over the summer, explores the latest research into those tragic events of August 1819 and their significance in the road to democracy.
On Monday 16 August 1819 troops under the authority of the Lancashire and Cheshire magistrates...
Peterloo August 1819: the English Uprising
-
The burial dilemma
Historian article
The recent attacks on Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery have added impetus to the public debate about how we memorialise the dead and the public and private costs of mourning.
The burial dilemma
-
Linking Law: Viking and medieval Scandinavian law in literature and history
Historian article
Ongoing interdisciplinary developments have cast light on the surprisingly sophisticated world of Viking-age and medieval Scandinavian law and its wide-ranging influence in these societies.
In many ways, the Viking Age and its inhabitants are more familiar than ever before. From video games to television and films, new narrative frontiers and bigger...
Linking Law: Viking and medieval Scandinavian law in literature and history
-
The Diabolical Cato-Street Plot
Historian article
Richard A. Gaunt reminds us that it is still possible to visit the site of a notorious conspiratorial challenge to Lord Liverpool’s government, and why this event was so significant.
At around 7.30pm on Wednesday 23 February 1820, a dozen Bow Street Runners in plain clothes, led by George Thomas...
The Diabolical Cato-Street Plot
-
Exploring local sources
Historian article
Tim Lomas was correct when he said, in his article in the Summer 2019 edition of The Historian, that historians can see much more in medieval documents than the scribes intended.
Lay manors in Bedfordshire are a good example. Eggington manor, in the south-west, was part of a larger estate and held...
Exploring local sources
-
My Favourite History Place: Gladstone’s Library at Hawarden
Historian feature
When I first visited Gladstone’s residential library in 1977 for a pre-university History degree reading week, I barely knew who Gladstone was. I had just come back from a holiday in Italy and the contrast between Florence and Hawarden, a Welsh border town, was startling. I came from the sunny remains...
My Favourite History Place: Gladstone’s Library at Hawarden
-
Fake news: Psy-war and propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66
Historian article
Geoffrey Robinson explores a little-known episode of the Cold War where half a million people were killed and the Indonesian communist party was destroyed, aided and abetted by the major Western Powers.
Amidst all the talk of fake news and Russian meddling in US politics, it is easy to lose...
Fake news: Psy-war and propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66
-
Homes fit for heroes? James Cecil and the public interest
Historian article
Hugh Gault reminds us that the provision of adequate and price-accessible housing stock has been a matter of public debate and concern for over a hundred years. Economics and financial priorities have continued to undermine the methodologies and good intentions needed to solve the problem.
This year is the hundredth...
Homes fit for heroes? James Cecil and the public interest
-
Havelock Hall: the East India Company college gymnasium at Addiscombe
Historian article
Trevor James emphasises the importance of this structure in England’s sporting landscape.
Tucked behind the houses in Havelock Road in the East Croydon suburb of Addiscombe is a seemingly unprepossessing building, known locally as ‘Havelock Hall’. Now converted into flats, it derives its name from its late nineteenth-century religious use,...
Havelock Hall: the East India Company college gymnasium at Addiscombe
-
How hidden are ordinary people in later medieval England?
Historian article
Tim Lomas explores some documents from the Bishop and Priory of Durham that shed interesting light on the lives of ‘ordinary people’ in medieval England.
It is largely a truism to state that the majority of documents from medieval Britain were not designed to shed much light on the lives...
How hidden are ordinary people in later medieval England?
-
Britain’s Jews and the First World War
Historian article
Jewish service in the UK military forces can be traced back over 300 years. During the First World War that service was demonstrated into the tens of thousands. In this article the contribution of Anglo-Jewry is brought to light.
Britain’s Jews and the First World War
-
We will remember them: well, most of them
Historian article
Richard Broadhead provides a personal view on whether the mammoth task of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission can always be fulfilled, especially at a time of so many anniversaries.
We will remember them: well, most of them
-
Out and About with homing pigeons in the Great War
Historian feature
Trevor James emphasises the role and importance of ‘messenger’ pigeons on the Western Front.
Amidst the one-hundredth anniversary commemorations of the ending of the Great War, there has been a sudden burst of interest, in such varying locations as both Houses of Parliament and the Antiques Roadshow, in the role...
Out and About with homing pigeons in the Great War
-
Out and About in Derry/Londonderry
Historian feature
Jenni Hyde was out and about in Derry in 2016 and describes how the sights of the city tell the story of a history which is so much more than just the legacy of the Troubles.
Out and About in Derry/Londonderry
-
Kings and coins in later Anglo-Saxon England
Historian article
The study of Anglo-Saxon coins shows the sophistication of tenth- and eleventh-century government and of the economy. But they carried a moral and religious message too.
Kings and coins in later Anglo-Saxon England
-
1968: the year of reckoning
Historian article
Hugh Gault explains why, 50 years later, 1968 is still remembered as a dramatic year.
1967 was 'the summer of love', and that spirit continued into 1968; but there were also many events in 1968 that were of a different sort, when the liberty of 1967 was accompanied by a...
1968: the year of reckoning
-
Out and About in Ryedale
Historian feature
Tom Pickles explores Ryedale in Yorkshire, where an extraordinary network of churches bears witness to the social, political, and religious transformations of the Anglo-Saxon period.
Out and About in Ryedale
-
The LGBT civil rights movement in Britain
Historian article
This article has been created from the podcast of the same name on this website by Professor Sally R. Munt, University of Sussex. It has been put into article form by Paula Kitching, and the factual and arguments of the piece are those of the original author.
The LGBT civil rights movement in Britain
