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'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
Article
Notwithstanding the tribal hatred recently shown for each other by a handful of English and Turkish football fanatics, nobody who has travelled in Turkey or taken a holiday in that country can have failed to notice the courtesy and generosity with which visitors are invariably treated. Indeed, one of the...
'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
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Eighteenth-century Britain and its Empire
Article
The concept of an ‘English’ or even of a ‘British’ empire has been in use at least from the sixteenth century. What the term then conveyed was of course very different from what it was to convey in modern times. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, contemporaries were beginning to envisage...
Eighteenth-century Britain and its Empire
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Bombing and the Air War on the Italian Front 1915-1918
Article
During the First World War air operations were on a much smaller scale on the Italian front than in France and Flanders. Italian fighter pilots claimed to have shot down fewer than a tenth of the number of enemy aircraft officially credited to German fighter pilots operating over the Western...
Bombing and the Air War on the Italian Front 1915-1918
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Czech Uranium and Stalin's Bomb
Article
Z.A.B. Zeman uncovers a fateful link between Czechoslovakia’s brief monopoly of uranium in Europe and the country’s subordination to the USSR. The great uranium rush started in 1943 and lasted for about seven years. Unlike the gold rushes of the past, uranium did not promise untold riches to individuals but...
Czech Uranium and Stalin's Bomb
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Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253)
Historian article
Jack Cunningham considers a medieval philosopher, the significance of whose ideas has grown in importance through the centuries.
An appreciation of Grosseteste the thinker has not always been at its appropriate level during the almost 800 years since his death. If historians have paid attention to the great man this ...
Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253)
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British organised youth and the First World War
Historian article
This posthumously published article by John Springhall was presented to us, with recommended illustrations, shortly before his death. It reflects his interest in popular culture and how people lived their lives in quite a remarkable manner.
Adult-directed British uniformed youth movements played a significant but often overlooked role during the...
British organised youth and the First World War
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Out and About in Medieval Toulouse
Historian article
David Pearse takes us to the historic heart of France’s fourth-largest city.
Looking at the street plan
Bordering the River Garonne, medieval Toulouse extends as far as the Basilica of St Sernin but is concentrated in an area bounded approximately by the Jacobins’ Church to the north, St Etienne Cathedral...
Out and About in Medieval Toulouse
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Folkestone in World War One
Historian article
Grahame Jones contributes to our determination to explore the wider involvement of the community in responding to the challenges of the Great War, in this case two inspirational women who provided refreshments for soldiers en route through Folkestone harbour.
A fading Edwardian resort and handy for that trip through the...
Folkestone in World War One
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My Favourite History Place - Nuneaton's Old Grammar School
Historian article
Near the centre of the largest town in Warwickshire, an oasis of calm encompasses the area of Nuneaton parish church, vicarage and Old Grammar School. Of the three buildings, the Old Grammar School may be the least impressive but its history is just as eventful. Nuneaton’s Boys’ Free Grammar School,...
My Favourite History Place - Nuneaton's Old Grammar School
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Cholera and the Fight for Public Health Reform in Mid-Victorian England
Article
Of the many social changes that occurred during the Victorian age, public health reform is widely agreed to be one of the most significant. In the early Victorian era the vast majority of Britons drank water from murky ponds and rivers, carried to their dwellings in buckets; and their excrement...
Cholera and the Fight for Public Health Reform in Mid-Victorian England
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Out & About: On the Somme
Historian feature
Paula Kitching demonstrates how to interpret and understand the memorial features of the Somme landscape.
One hundred and five years ago, a piece entitled ‘Out and about on the Somme’ would have been a travel piece for would-be tourists to the French countryside. The rolling hills and valleys provide a...
Out & About: On the Somme
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British armoured cars on the Eastern Front in the First World War
Historian article
Charlotte Alston reveals a little-known British involvement on the Eastern Front in the Great War.In early January 1918, Lieutenant Commander Soames of the British Armoured Car Division at Kursk, in Russia, telegraphed to his commandingofficer Oliver Locker Lampson, who was in London, to thank him for his Christmas greetings. All...
British armoured cars on the Eastern Front in the First World War
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The 1650s
Historian article
The 1630s in England began effectively in 1629 with the abrupt dismissal of Charles I’s third parliament and ended in 1640 at the first meeting of what would become the Long Parliament. Similarly we may start the 1650s with the regicide of January 1649 and finish with the surprising return...
The 1650s
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MOOCs and the Middle Ages
Historian article
Deirdre O’Sullivan explains how history courses such as England in the Time of Richard III are now freely available to people anywhere in the world who have online access. She reports that in the past two years 40,000 learners have followed this course.
MOOCs (Massive Open Access Online Courses) are...
MOOCs and the Middle Ages
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First Zeppelin shot down over Britain
Historian article
In the First World War Britain suddenly became vulnerable to aerial attack. Alf Wilkinson records a memorable turning-point in the battle against the Zeppelin menace.
On the night of the 2-3 September 1916 Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson became the first pilot to shoot down a Zeppelin raider over Britain. He...
First Zeppelin shot down over Britain
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Out and About near Cromford in Derbyshire
Historian feature
The River Derwent is a dominant feature of the Derbyshire landscape from the Ladybower Reservoir to where it joins the River Trent just south of Derby. This river is noted for the sheer power and volume of water it carries: in the 1720s Daniel Defoe observed ‘the Derwent is a...
Out and About near Cromford in Derbyshire
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The soldier in Later Medieval England
Historian article
Traditionally, the Middle Ages have been portrayed as the ‘Feudal Age', when men were given land in return for performance of unpaid military service. Whilst this may have formed the basis of the English military system in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was most certainly not the way armies...
The soldier in Later Medieval England
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Henry V in the cinema
Historian article
Public attitudes to Henry V are very much influenced by WilliamShakespeare's interpretation. Richard Inverne discusses howShakespeare's version has been translated into cinematic form byLaurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh.
Shakespeare indulges himself considerably with his own relatively recent history - Richards II and III, Henrys IV, V and VI, for example....
Henry V in the cinema
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On the campaign trail: walking the Hundred Years War
Historian article
In the tradition of landscape historians, Peter Hoskins has explored some of the route marches taken by English armies during the Hundred Years War.
After the battle of Crécy in 1346 and the capture of Calais by Edward III in the following year the Hundred Years War settled into an...
On the campaign trail: walking the Hundred Years War
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Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
Historian article
‘It is often said on the other side of the water that none of the exhibitions which we send to England are purely and distinctively American', exhorted Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in an unsolicited letter of September 1884 to ‘Colonel' William Frederick Cody (1846-1917). ‘If you will take the Wild...
Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
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My Favourite History Place: Brixham
Historian feature
Paul Brunyee writes about a surprising link between Brixham in Devon, and Napoleon, and the impact the arrival of Napoleon in 1815 had on the townspeople.
The waters and cliffs of Brixham, on the south coast of England, have played small but significant parts in the long wars against France....
My Favourite History Place: Brixham
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Durham
Article
Emeritus Professor G. R. Batho a personal perspective on the city of the prince bishops. We all have highly personal impressions of the towns and cities with which we are familiar. Few readers of The Historian are likely to emulate the good lady who hearing that I was leaving the...
Durham
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Sir William Petty: Scientist, Economist, Inventor, 1623-1687
Article
In December 1687 Sir William Petty, a founder member, attended the annual dinner of the Royal Society. He was obviously seriously ill and in 'greate pain' and shortly afterwards, on December 16th, he died in his house in Piccadilly, opposite St James Church. It was a quiet end to a...
Sir William Petty: Scientist, Economist, Inventor, 1623-1687
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Reinventing the Charter: from Sir Edward Coke to 'freeborn John'
Historian article
When was Magna Carta launched on its modern career as a symbol of freedom and liberty? Justin Champion looks at the role of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century lawyers and politicians in shaping how we see the Charter today.
‘For every person who knows what the contents of Magna Carta actually...
Reinventing the Charter: from Sir Edward Coke to 'freeborn John'
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Magna Carta: oblivion and revival
Historian article
Magna Carta was to go through a number of revisions before it finally took its place on the statute book. Nicholas Vincent takes us through the twists and turns of the tale of the Charter's death and revival after June 1215.
The Charter issued by King John at Runnymede is...
Magna Carta: oblivion and revival
