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Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar
Article
Whenever British radar is discussed the name that usually comes to mind is that of Robert Watson Watt. Our history books and our dictionaries of biography consistently attribute the discovery of radar in Britain solely to Watson Watt, with little or no mention of the key role played by his...
Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar
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The price of reform: the people's budget and the present trauma
Article
When Lloyd George succeeded Asquith as Chancellor of the Exchequer in April 1908, his first task was to introduce the old age pensions Asquith had initiated. His second was to prove even more momentous. On 29 April 1909 he presented what has become known as "The People's Budget".
The task...
The price of reform: the people's budget and the present trauma
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Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
Article
Daniel Goldhagen defines anti-semitism as ‘negative beliefs and emotions about Jews qua Jews.' Nazis believed Jews to be the source of Germany's misfortunes, and that they must be denied German citizenship and removed from German society. Hitler never compromised on the need to settle what he regarded as the Jewish...
Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
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Remembering Neville Chamberlain
Article
Brent Dyck is a Canadian teacher and a previous contributor to The Historian. In this short essay he offers us his objective interpretation of the achievements of Neville Chamberlain. For some what he says may seem surprising and for others it might even be controversial. However, editorially it seemed entirely...
Remembering Neville Chamberlain
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President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
Article
Introduction
Shortly after noon on 20 January 2009 Barack Obama began his historic Inaugural Address as 44th President of the United States of America. On the west porch of the Capitol, home to the US Congress, and under propitiously blue skies, the first African American president spoke before more than...
President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
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Historical Diary: An Eighteenth-Century Gap Year
Article
Historical diaries written by children are rare and only seven from England and the United States written before 1800 are known to have survived. One of these, found tucked away in the London Metropolitan Archive, is the diary of William Hugh Burgess, a fifteen year-old boy who grew up in...
Historical Diary: An Eighteenth-Century Gap Year
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The Advent of Decimalisation in Britain: 1971
Article
Decimal Day in Britain was Monday 15 February 1971. New coins and notes were circulated. There was no special issue postage stamp to commemorate the occasion, only a new series with some unfamiliar values, such as 7½p instead of 1s 6d. The fortieth anniversary of the arrival of decimal currency...
The Advent of Decimalisation in Britain: 1971
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Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
Article
The late Frank Ellis was working on a full biography of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, at the time of his death in 2007. He had contributed a life of Wilmot to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography which appeared in 2004. In it he wrote that ‘on 21 November...
Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
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Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890
Article
One hundred and twenty years ago the advent of the first red May Days caused major concern across Europe. To general surprise, in 1890 and the next few years some of the largest rallies occurred in London. In Britain the main demonstration on the nearest Sunday to May Day passed...
Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890
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Men's Beards and Women's Backsides
Article
Since the late Middle Ages periods in which it was fashionable for men to be clean-shaven have alternated in Europe with periods in which it was fashionable for men to wear beards. In some periods clean-shavenness went together with long hair, at others beards went together with short hair, and...
Men's Beards and Women's Backsides
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Hammer, House of Horror: The making of a British film company, 1934 to 1979
Article
The now legendary film company Hammer made such classics as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), plus their numerous sequels and subsequent remakes of old Universal Gothic chillers (The Curse of the Werewolf, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera), as well as making international stars out of Peter...
Hammer, House of Horror: The making of a British film company, 1934 to 1979
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Culture Shock: The Arrival of the Conquistadores in Aztec Mexico
Article
When the Spanish Conquistadores arrived in Mexico during the early sixteenth century there were many repercussions for the indigenous people. Their conversion to Christianity and the sacking of their temples are two of the most well known examples. However, it is often forgotten that the Aztecs had only a pictorial...
Culture Shock: The Arrival of the Conquistadores in Aztec Mexico
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Towards Reform in 1809
Article
Two hundred years ago it must have seemed to some as if the time for political and economic reform in Britain had arrived. A number of the necessary conditions appeared to be in place:
recent examples from America and France showing how readily and rapidly established systems could be overturned...
Towards Reform in 1809
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The National Memorial to William Ewart Gladstone
Article
To stand amidst the books in St Deiniol's Library is an intimidating experience for it is an encounter with the restless, brooding intelligence that was William Ewart Gladstone.
Lord Runcie of Cuddesdon, Archbishop of Canterbury (18 May 1998)
The ‘Temple of Peace'
St Deiniol's Library was founded in 1894 by...
The National Memorial to William Ewart Gladstone
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Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy
Historian article
The murder of America’s thirty-fifth president is often regarded as one of the key events in the recent history of the United States. Numerous conspiracy theories have made it appear more complex, and more mysterious, than was in fact the case.
No event in recent American history has been more comprehensively...
Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy
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Anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War
Historian article
The Second World War saw the development of significant anti-Americanism in Britain. This article locates the centre of wartime anti-Americanism in the politics of Conservative imperialists, who believed the USA was trying to deliberately dismantle the British Empire in order to fulfil its own imperial ambitions.
The Second World War...
Anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War
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Doomed to fail: America’s intervention in Vietnam
Historian article
Why did American military involvement in Vietnam fail? In this article, David McGill explains why the United States never had a realistic chance of defeating the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies.
The decision by the United States government to become involved in supporting the South Vietnamese government against the...
Doomed to fail: America’s intervention in Vietnam
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History Abridged: American Policy: theory and practice over 200 years
Historian feature
History Abridged: In this feature we take a person, time, theme or event and tell you the vast rich history in small space. A long dip into history in a shortened form. See all History Abridged articles
The ‘Monroe Doctrine’ in 1825 provided a cornerstone for future United States foreign policy. Drafted...
History Abridged: American Policy: theory and practice over 200 years
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My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
Historian feature
The Tenement Museum is not remotely like any museum I had previously visited. It is an old tenement building where generations of New York migrants lived and loved, worked and had families before moving both on and out. The Tenement Museum tells the story of the Lower East Side through the...
My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
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The Victorian Age
Classic Pamphlet
This Classic Pamphlet was published in 1937 (the centenary of the accession of Queen Victoria, who succeeded to the throne on June 20, 1837).
Synopsis of contents:
1. Is the Victorian Age a distinct 'period' of history?
Landmarks establishing its beginning: the Reform Bill, railways, other inventions, new leaders in...
The Victorian Age
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Secular acts and sacred practices in the Italian Renaissance church interior
Historian article
Joanne Allen reveals a fundamental structural and architectural development in Italian churches in the Renaissance era, demonstrating that careful observation of structures and archives can substantially inform our appreciation of all church buildings.
In the opening to The Decameron (c. 1350), Boccaccio described how the ten young people who would become storytellers...
Secular acts and sacred practices in the Italian Renaissance church interior
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Joan Vaux: a remarkable Tudor lady
Historian article
Joanna Hickson is a hugely successful novelist, specialising in historical fiction, and she describes herself as feeling that she actually lives in the fifteenth century. For readers of The Historian she explores and explains how she developed her understanding and knowledge of a highly significant Tudor woman who is a central figure in two of...
Joan Vaux: a remarkable Tudor lady
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The Spanish-American War revisited: rise of an American empire?
Historian article
Anthony Ruggiero reveals how United States foreign policy evolved from its effective adherence to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 into securing its own overseas ‘empire’.
The Spanish-American War of 1898 was pivotal in launching the United States into recognition as an empire. Following the war, the United Sates accepted its role...
The Spanish-American War revisited: rise of an American empire?
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Evelyn Waugh’s books on the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–36
Historian article
Philip Woods discusses Evelyn Waugh’s contribution to understanding the nature of journalism before the Second World War.
This article compares the value to historians of the two books Evelyn Waugh wrote based on his experiences as a war correspondent covering the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935–36. The popular satiric novel Scoop (1938) is...
Evelyn Waugh’s books on the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–36
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Excluded by men? Joanna the Mad, patriarchy and a charge of insanity
Historian article
Glyn Redworth re-appraises the life of an unfortunate queen.
Joanna of Castile was a pretty child. She had an oval face and a long delicate nose. Her skin was felt to be attractively light in colour as was her hair. Fiercely intelligent, the basics of Latin came easily to her....
Excluded by men? Joanna the Mad, patriarchy and a charge of insanity
