Branch Podcasts & Publications

In this section you can listen to recorded lectures from our branches, as well as some of the keynote lectures from the HA annual conference. There are also fascinating articles produced by some of the branches, in particular from the Swansea Branch Chronicle.

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  • 'Modernising Calcutta' by Professor Anindita Ghosh: filmed branch lecture

    Article

    On 3 December 2018, the Bolton Branch marked a first for the HA by live-streaming a lecture on Twitter. Professor Anindita Ghosh of the University of Manchester spoke to the branch on Calcutta in the 19th century. The event was streamed live on the branch’s Twitter feed, @boltonhistory. Watch the lecture here (NB external website, opens...

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  • American Liberalism: The Career of a Concept

    Article

    Jonathan Bell: Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of History at the University of Reading.What historians have come to term ‘liberalism' in an American context has taken on numerous meanings that provide a lens through which to examine broad trends in US history across the twentieth century. From the...

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  • Bolton Branch Members' Publishing Success !

    18th November 2008

    Four members of the Bolton Branch of the Historical Association have had research published during 2008.  A new book by Dr Glyn Redworth has shed light on the little known life of what was probably the first female missionary to Britain - in all its gory detail.  The She-Apostle, published...

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  • Branch Podcast: Good Evening Sweetheart

    5th March 2017

    Just before our "Good Evening Sweetheart" talk (9th February) was due to start in Hillhead Library a young lady librarian rushed in waving a sheet of paper, looking very excited - the Secretary wondered if we were double-booked and about to be asked to leave. But no! She announced that...

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  • Bristol and America 1480-1631

    Article

    This pamphlet addresses the relationship between Bristol and America, charting the rising and waning interest the city and its merchants had in discovering new lands and profiting from them, and the success or more often the failure of these voyages. It provides an interesting argument which may be seen to...

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  • Bristol and the Slave Trade

    Article

    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...

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  • Cleopatra Podcast

    Article

    This pod-cast was recorded at the Central London Branch of the Historical Association on Saturday 20th February 2010, at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, University of London.   We were pleased to welcome cultural historian Lucy Hughes-Hallet to the branch to speak on ‘Cleopatra'.   Lucy Hughes-Hallet detailed how fact and legend about Cleopatra had been intertwined through history in...

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  • Envoi: First World War Memories

    Podcast

    During the recent First World War centenary many HA branches held lectures and talks about a variety of aspects of the war. Some had outings and many looked at their local war memorials or Pals Battalions. The Glasgow and West of Scotland Branch decided that as many of their members...

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  • Ferninando Gorges and New England

    Article

    Sir Ferdinando Gorges (July 1565 - May 24, 1647), by some considered the "Father of English Colonization in North America", was an early English colonial entrepreneur and founder of the Province of Maine in 1622, although Gorges himself never set foot in the New World.  Sir Ferdinando Gorges was born...

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  • Film: Foreign Intervention in the Cold War

    Article

    This filmed Branch Lecture entitled "Foreign Intervention in the Cold War" features Dr Volker Prott of Aston University. In his talk, Dr Prott, looks at three international crises of the 1960s and early 1970s, the Congo Crisis, the Kashmir dispute and the Indo Pakistan conflict over East Pakistan/Bangladesh. Dr Prott examines when, why and...

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  • Film: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War

    Article

    In this HA Virtual Branch talk Professor Richard Toye explores Churchill’s response to the USSR and how his actions during the early Cold War years intersected with his views of traditional Anglo-Russian tensions and the legacy of the ‘Great Game’. Richard Toye is Professor of Modern History at the University...

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  • Historical Causation: Is One Thing More Important Than Another?

    Article

    WHAT COLOUR ARE THE UNICORNS?Professor Steve Rigby, recently retired from the University of Manchester, delivered ‘Historical Causation: Is One Thing More Important Than Another?' to the Bolton Branch of the Historical Association on 29th November 2010.  His lecture gives a fascinating introduction to the philosophy of historical causation, looking at...

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  • Joan of Arc: Woman Warrior, Witch

    Multipage Article

    In 2011 Professor Anne Curry, President of the Historical Association, gave a lecture on Joan of Arc to the Swansea Branch. This is a podcast of that lecture.

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  • Lloyd George and Leadership: the Influences of Mr Gladstone and Abraham Lincoln

    Multipage Article

    On 26 November 2010, 4pm, at the National Waterfront Museum, the Swansea Branch Anniversary Lecture was delivered by Kenneth O Morgan (Baron Morgan of Aberdyfi in the County of Gwynedd) on ‘Lloyd George and Leadership: the Influences of Mr Gladstone and Abraham Lincoln'.

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  • Podcast: Spain 1808 – Iraq 2003: some thoughts on the use and abuse of history

    Article

    This podcast was recorded by the Bolton Branch of the Historical Association on Monday 1 February 2010, at the Parish Hall in Bolton. We were pleased to welcome Professor Charles Esdaile of the University of Liverpool back to the branch to speak on ‘Spain 1808 – Iraq 2003: Some Thoughts...

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  • Prehistoric Bristol

    Article

    This period is represented in the valley of the Bristol Avon by the Acheulian industries, named from the type station of St. Acheul in the Somme valley, which has yielded many ovate and pear-shaped hand-axes characteristic of the period. These industries flourished during the very long Second Interglacial phase, a...

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  • Presidential Lecture - Charles I: The People's Martyr?

    Article

    2012 Annual Conference Presidential Lecture Charles I: The People's Martyr? Jackie Eales, HA President and Professor of Early Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University Charles I was renowned for his distrust of ‘popularity'. Yet during the 1640s he was forced to appeal to his people for support and in...

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  • Puritan attitudes towards plays and pleasure in the Age of Shakespeare

    Article

    In Twelfth Night Shakespeare gently mocked the Puritans, who objected to stage plays and other entertainments. Yet within four decades, the Puritans had closed the London theatres and were about to seize power from Charles I. Among their many reforms were the banning of Christmas celebrations and of Twelfth Night itself....

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  • Report on the Bristol Branch's A-level Russian History Conference

    16th May 2024

    The Bristol Branch of the HA’s A-level Russian History Conference27 March 2024  ‘Such a great event – both for students and teachers. Many thanks…for organising it, and for sharing excellent resources’ (Mark Kauntze, Head of History Redland Green School, Bristol) ‘Brilliant, thank you… our students really enjoyed the experience.’ (Phill...

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  • Richard Evans Medlicott lecture: The Origins of the First World War

    Article

    This year the Historical Association's Medlicott medal for services to history went to Professor Sir Richard Evans. Richard Evans is the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge and President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He has written numerous highly respected and internationally best-selling books. Evans is bests known for his works on...

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