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How damaging to the Nazis was the Shetland Bus between 1940 and 1944?
Historian article
The Shetland Bus operation may be considered successful in that it supplied Norwegian resistance movements with weapons and took many refugees from Norway to Shetland, and that it managed to bind just shy of 300,000 German troops in Norway. However, because of this operation, forty-four men lost their lives, and...
How damaging to the Nazis was the Shetland Bus between 1940 and 1944?
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The great Liberal landslide: the 1906 General Election in perspective
Historian article
On 1 May 1997 the Conservative party suffered an electoral defeat so overwhelming that political commentators were left rummaging through the statistics of the previous two centuries to find anything similar. The Times concluded on 3 May that it was the party's worst performance since 1832, though 'The disaster suffered...
The great Liberal landslide: the 1906 General Election in perspective
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Doing History at University 2025
Thinking of studying history at university?
Booking closed
(Registration is via Cademy which opens in a new window. Please read the HA CPD terms and conditions before registering)
We are pleased to be hosting a Doing History at University event for students and teachers in partnership with the University of Sheffield. The aim of the event is to...
Doing History at University 2025
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New Universities of the 60s
Historian article
New Universities of the 60s: One professor's recollections: glad confident morning and after
Living history
How long do professional historians wait before writing about their own personal involvement in episodes of lasting significance in history? If they wait too long they are dead, and their evidence is lost. A striking recent...
New Universities of the 60s
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The Urban Working Classes in England 1880-1914
Historian article
On reading the title of this article, any reader at all familiar with the social history of late Victorian and Edwardian England is likely to think of the revelations at the time of the extent of urban poverty. Two major enquiries, one into London poverty, and the other into poverty...
The Urban Working Classes in England 1880-1914
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Spencer Perceval: private values and public virtues
Historian article
The public man and his career Spencer Perceval's career as a public figure lasted from 1796 when he became a King's Counsel and MP for Northampton until his murder sixteen years later at the age of 49. He was shot in the lobby of the House of Commons at 5.15pm...
Spencer Perceval: private values and public virtues
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Irish Unionism 1885-1922
Classic Pamphlet
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of Irish unionism for British and Irish politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The movement was supported almost exclusively by Irish Protestants who were of Anglo-Irish or Scotch-Irish descent and who comprised roughly one-quarter of the population of Ireland. Its...
Irish Unionism 1885-1922
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England Arise! The General Election of 1945
Historian article
‘The past week will live in history for two things’, announced the Sunday Times of 29 July 1945, ‘first the return of a Labour majority to Parliament and the end of Churchill's great war Premiership.’ Most other newspapers concurred. The Daily Mirror, of 27 July, proclaimed that the 1945 general election...
England Arise! The General Election of 1945
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Podcast Series: William I to Henry VII
Multipage Article
An HA Podcasted History featuring Professor David Bates and Professor Nicholas Vincent of the University of East Anglia, Dr Philip Morgan of Keele University, Professor Mark Ormrod of the University of York, Dr James Davis of Queens University Belfast, Professor Michael Hicks of the University of Winchester, Dr Sean Cunningham of...
Podcast Series: William I to Henry VII
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Attitudes to Liberty and Enslavement: the career of James Irving, a Liverpool slave ship surgeon and captain
Historian article
Prior to abolition in 1807, Britain was the world’s leading slave trading nation. Of an estimated six million individuals forcibly transported from Africa in the transatlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century, almost 2.5 million (40 per cent) were carried in British vessels.2 The contemporary attitudes and assumptions which underpinned...
Attitudes to Liberty and Enslavement: the career of James Irving, a Liverpool slave ship surgeon and captain
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Wellington's Soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars
Historian article
Wellington's Soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars
The war with France, which began in 1793, had moved to the Iberian Peninsula by 1808. This year is therefore the two-hundredth anniversary of the commencement of the Peninsular War campaigns. War on the Peninsula demanded huge resources of manpower in order to defeat...
Wellington's Soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars
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Archives and Record Management
Continuing Professional Development
The University of Manchester gives the following advice on courses, careers and funding:
Courses
The choice for post-graduate courses is much more limited for archives and records management compared to those available for libraries and information studies. The Society of Archivists recommends just six: University College London, University College Dublin,...
Archives and Record Management
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Tudor Government
Classic Pamphlet
On 21 August 1485 Henry Tudor won the battle of Bosworth in Leicestershire and established himself as Henry VII, King of England. He had landed in Wales two weeks before, the Lancastrian claimant to the throne against the incumbent Yorkist, Richard III. He had received assistance from Charles VIII of...
Tudor Government
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Oliver Cromwell 1658-1958
Classic Pamphlet
Ever since the death of Oliver Cromwell 300 years ago his reputation has been the subject of controversy. The royalist view of him was expressed by Clarendon: "a brave bad mad," an ambitious hypocrite. This interpretation was supported by many former Parliamentarians: Edmund Ludlow regarded Cromwell as the lost leader...
Oliver Cromwell 1658-1958
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How did the Civil Rights movement change America?
Historian article
In 1984 Jimmy Carter reflected on growing up in the segregated South. He recalled that, as a young child, he, like many white children, had had an African American child as his closest friend. The two children spent all their play time together. One day they travelled on the train...
How did the Civil Rights movement change America?
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International Baccalaureate
International Baccalaureate
Students taking the International Baccalaureate have to study subjects from six groups, including maths, literature, science and a foreign language. Three subjects are taken at Standard Level (SL) and three at Higher Level (HL). There are two exam sessions a year - in November for the southern hemisphere and May...
International Baccalaureate
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New partnership for the Great Debate 2026
15th May 2025
The Historical Association is delighted to announce Rayburn Tours as the official sponsor of the Great Debate 2026.
With over 60 years of experience in educational and group travel, Rayburn Tours is a family-run organisation dedicated to creating inspirational and enriching experiences for young people.
Rayburn Tours' commitment to education...
New partnership for the Great Debate 2026
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'Veni, Vidi, Vici!'
Historian article
A personal reflection on Julius Caesar and the conquest of Britain
Julius Caesar always brings to mind the famous dictum of Winston Churchill, ‘History will be kind to me, for I shall write it!' In his writings Julius Caesar provides a vivid and detailed account of his invasions of Britain in...
'Veni, Vidi, Vici!'
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American History Selected Articles
Selected Articles
American History - selected articles:
1. American West, up to 20th Century.
The American Diplomatic Tradition
Have gun, will travel: The myth of the frontier in the Hollywood Western
Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
Savages and rattlesnakes', Washington, District of Columbia: A...
American History Selected Articles
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Film: China's Good War
How World War II is shaping a new nationalism
In this lecture Professor Mitter uses film and other propaganda works to explore how key events of global history are being represented in China to develop a different understanding of its own past. The talk addresses a number of the factors for this change in how China is reflecting on...
Film: China's Good War
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Varieties of Reformation
Classic Pamphlet
The most significant change to have occurred in our view of the Reformation in recent years is the growing acknowledgement of historians that it was no unitary phenomenon whose triumph was assured and inevitable. What we refer to in short-hand as ‘the' Reformation was a many-sided affair which began with...
Varieties of Reformation
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Beware the serpent of Rome
Article
On 14 February 1868, the Carlisle Journal reported as follows: … two meetings were held in the Athenaeum in this city , “for the purpose of forming an auxiliary to co-operate with the Church Association in London, to uphold the principles and order of the United Church of England and...
Beware the serpent of Rome
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Disraeli, Peel and the Corn Laws: the making of a conservative reputation
Historian article
125 years after his death, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, still provides the political lode-star for generations of Conservatives. Lately, for the first time in 30 years, Disraeli's name and example has been enthusiastically evoked by the party leadership and David Cameron has projected himself as a Disraeli for the...
Disraeli, Peel and the Corn Laws: the making of a conservative reputation
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Louis XIV
Classic Pamphlet
Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 and became King on May 14 1643 at the age of four years and eight months on the death of his father Louis XIII. He attended the Conseil d'en haut from 1649 when he was eleven years old. He announced his coming...
Louis XIV
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Bristol and the Slave Trade
Classic Pamphlet
Captain Thomas Wyndham of Marshfield Park in Somerset was on voyage to Barbary where he sailed from Kingroad, near Bristol, with three ships full of goods and slaves thus beginning the association of African Trade and Bristol. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bristol was not a place of...
Bristol and the Slave Trade
