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French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?
Historian article
The year 1066 - the one universally remembered date in English history, so well-known that banks advise customers not to choose it as their PIN number - opened the country up to French influence in spectacular fashion. During the ‘long twelfth century' (up to King John's death in 1216) that...
French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?
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The Centenary of the First World War: An unpopular view
Historian article
We are delighted to have an original article by Gary Sheffield in this edition of The Historian.
Gary Sheffield is Professor of War Studies, University of Wolverhampton. He is a specialist on Britain at war 1914-45 and is one of Britain's foremost historians on the First World War. He has...
The Centenary of the First World War: An unpopular view
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Out and About - On the Track of Brunel
Historian feature
In ‘Brushstrokes', his essay on biography, Ben Pimlott wrote: ‘A good biography is like a good portrait: it captures the essence of the sitter by being much more than a likeness. A good portrait is about history, philosophy, milieu. It asks questions as well as answering them, brushstrokes are economical,...
Out and About - On the Track of Brunel
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Obituaries: the first verdict in history
Historian article
Last year marked the deaths of two world-renowned historical figures - Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela. Their obituaries reflected the marked contrast in the way the pair were viewed. Mandela ended up by being universally admired, while Thatcher was both adored and despised in seemingly equal measure. Writer Nigel Starck...
Obituaries: the first verdict in history
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The Black Leveller
Historian Article
History is rarely far removed from today's concerns. What is true of history in general is true of biography; specifically. Darcus Howe: a political biography is no exception. In writing it, we were consciously intervening in current debates about Britain and ‘race'.
The impetus to write emerged in 2008 during...
The Black Leveller
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The Unfortunate Captain Peirce
Historian article
An apprentice biographer researches the career of an eighteenth-century sea captain
On a cold January afternoon in 1986, my neighbour announced that he intended to go to Dorset's Purbeck coast that night. Puzzled, I asked why. He explained it was the 200th anniversary of the wreck of the East Indiaman,...
The Unfortunate Captain Peirce
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Out and About in Letchworth: A Social Experiment
Historian feature
In a previous edition of The Historian (110, Summer 2011) we highlighted the midnineteenth century achievement of the industrialist John Dodgson Carr in creating the holiday resort of Silloth as a place of resort and recreation for his workers, and the wider workforce in Carlisle. So the seeds of trying...
Out and About in Letchworth: A Social Experiment
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My Favourite Place - Beamish
Historian feature
Hopping off a tram at Beamish Museum, you're stepping straight into life in Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian times. What I really love about Beamish, the Living Museum of the North, is that it not only shows how communities in the region used to live - but also gives you a...
My Favourite Place - Beamish
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Each man's life was worth 1sh 1d 1/2d!
Historian article
Alf Wilkinson explores Britain's biggest coal mining disaster, at Senghenydd Colliery, in South Wales, in October 1913.
At ten past eight in the morning of Tuesday 14 October 1913, just after 900 men had started work underground, an explosion ripped through Senghenydd Colliery, near Caerphilly, killing 439 miners and, later...
Each man's life was worth 1sh 1d 1/2d!
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The Yeomanry, 1913
Historian article
The Territorial Force, as formed in 1908, had 54 cavalry regiments organised in 14 brigades and known collectively as the Yeomanry. This meant that the Yeomanry consisted of 1,168 officers and 23,049 other ranks in September 1913 out of a Territorial Force which numbered 9,390 officers and 236,389 other ranks....
The Yeomanry, 1913
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India in 1914
Historian article
Rather as Queen Victoria was never as ‘Victorian' as we tend to assume, so British India in the years leading up to 1914 does not present the cliched spectacle of colonists in pith helmets and shorts lording it over subservient natives that we might assume. Certainly that sort of relationship...
India in 1914
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Round About A Pound A Week
Historian article
In this edition, we begin a new occasional feature, where we explore a classic text that had a major impact both at the time it was published, and since. Alf Wilkinson discusses a book first published in 1913, and still in print, and explains why he thinks it is as...
Round About A Pound A Week
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Franz Ferdinand
Historian article
The Kapuzinerkirche (Church of the Capuchins) in Vienna's Neue Markt is one of the more curious attractions of the city, housing as it does the Kaisergruft crypt in which the Habsburgs are entombed, or rather in which their bodies are entombed: the hearts are usually kept in the Loreto Chapel...
Franz Ferdinand
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The Romanov Tercentenary: nostalgia versus history on the eve of the Great War
Historian article
The spring of 2013 was unusually significant for devotees of the Romanov dynasty. Though there was little international recognition of the fact, the season marked the 400th anniversary of the accession of Russia's first Romanov tsar. Historically, the story was a most dramatic one, for Mikhail Fedorovich had not seized...
The Romanov Tercentenary: nostalgia versus history on the eve of the Great War
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Out and About in Shaftesbury
Historian feature
Shaftesbury in North Dorset is one of the highest towns in England, standing as it does at 750 feet above sea level. As with many high points in the area, the first settlement was established around 8000 years ago in the middle of the Stone Age. The town went on...
Out and About in Shaftesbury
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My Favourite History Place: Sutton Hoo
Historian feature
A Secret Uncovered, A Mystery Unsolved
Sutton Hoo is a sandy heathland overlooking the estuary of the River Deben in Suffolk. In Old English a ‘hoo' is a promontory, ‘sutton' is southern, and ‘tun' is a settlement. Historians have known for years that the fields were farmed in the Iron...
My Favourite History Place: Sutton Hoo
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Four faces of nursing and the First World War
Historian article
With the centenary approaching, article after article will appear on battles, the men who fought, those who refused, those that died, those who returned and those that made the decisions. There will be articles on the home front and the women that stepped into the men's shoes often to be...
Four faces of nursing and the First World War
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Women, education and literacy in Tudor and Stuart England
Historian article
To booke and pen: Women, education and literacy in Tudor and Stuart England
As a student in the early 1970s, I became acutely aware that formal provision for women's education was a relatively recent development. I was at Bedford College, which originated in 1849 as the first higher education institution...
Women, education and literacy in Tudor and Stuart England
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Strange Journey: the life of Dorothy Eckersley
Historian article
Meeting in Berlin
Three days before the outbreak of the Second World War, William Joyce, the leader of the British Nazi group, the National Socialist League, was in Berlin. He and his wife, Margaret, had fled there fearing internment by the British government if war broke out. Yet as war...
Strange Journey: the life of Dorothy Eckersley
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Women and the Politics of the Parish in England
Historian article
Petticoat Politicians: Women and the Politics of the Parish in England
The history of women voting in Britain is familiar to many. 2013 marked the centenary of the zenith of the militant female suffrage movement, culminating in the tragic death of Emily Wilding Davison, crushed by the King's horse at...
Women and the Politics of the Parish in England
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Queenship in Medieval England: A Changing Dynamic?
Historian article
In the winter of 1235-6, Eleanor, the 12 year old daughter of Count Raymond-Berengar V of Provence and Beatrice of Savoy, left her native homeland. She travelled to England to marry King Henry III, a man 28 years her senior whom she had never met. The bride and her entourage...
Queenship in Medieval England: A Changing Dynamic?
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Out & About in Swansea Castle
Historian feature
The ruins of Swansea Castle stand at the edge of Swansea's shopping centre and are generally ignored by shoppers and passers-by who just ... well ... pass by. But this was to change to some extent in 2012, and the HA's Swansea Branch adopted a very close relationship with the...
Out & About in Swansea Castle
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Papal Election and Murder
Historian article
Before the smoke clears: The longest papal election in history was marred by a brutal murder
Papal elections never used to be so short or easy. In 1268 Pope Clement IV died and the cardinals, divided between French and Italian factions, would be deadlocked for the next three years over...
Papal Election and Murder
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Marcus Morris and Eagle
Historian article
Marcus Morris and Eagle: Approved reading for boys in the 1950s & 1960s
The National Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London's South Kensington held an exhibition in the first five months of 2012 devoted entirely to British adventure comics of the 1950s and 1960s, many taken...
Marcus Morris and Eagle
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Taking tea with Frau von Papen
Historian article
The Weimar Republic in its last days as seen and remembered by a five-year-old English boy. A long-standing member of the Historical Association remembers an experience from eighty years ago.
As Mrs Merkel is well aware, the fear of inflation is deeply embedded in the German folk memory. Eighty years...
Taking tea with Frau von Papen
