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...

During his own lifetime John Knox was engaged in violent disputes, and throughout the succeeding ages his character has been the subject of acrimonious controversy. While there is an infinite variety of opinion as to his character, there is complete unanimity as to his importance. This pamphlet discusses the life,...

"To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to his revealed will and approved ordinance, and finally it is the subversion of good order, and all equity and justice." John...

The tercentenary of John Wesley’s birth has been celebrated not just in his native country, but round the world – as widely, in fact, as the Methodism associated with him has spread. Over the years, in addition to innumerable biographies there have been many studies of particular aspects of his...

For Lord North in 1775, one John Wilkes was enough, ‘though ... to do him justice, it was not easy to find many such'. The impact of Wilkes between 1760 and 1780 was profound, a cause as much as a person. For Philip Francis, thought to be the satirist ‘Junius',...

Jordan Goodman takes us on a botanical journey to the ends of the earth. Joseph Banks never commanded a ship. In 1773, aged 30, he went on his last voyage, a short crossing from Hellevoetsluis, south Holland, to Harwich. Yet not only was the sea always at the centre of his...

Joseph Priestley ended his days in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. This is one of the most delightful spots in the eastern United States. It is situated at the confluence of the North Western and North Eastern branches of the Susquehanna, one of the great rivers of North America, which winds its way...

On 20 june, 1549, the men of the town of Attleborough and of the neighbouring hamlets of Eccles and Wilby, in South Norfolk, threw down the fences recently erected by John Green, lord of the manor of Beckhall in Wilby, round part of the common over which they all had...

The principles involved in the great religious and constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century are so important to us today, that it seems desirable on the occasion of the present tercentenary to lay before the members of the Historical Association some means of examining and re-examining their views on the...

The conclusions of historians change over the years, not only as a result of the discovery of new evidence, but as a result of the changing times in which historians themselves live and work. We have become familiar with the notion that each generation of historians may have its own...

Forty years after his higher degree research into the history of sport, Trevor James explores the much wider context in which that research now stands. Four hundred years ago, in 1617, James I made a decisive intervention into the simmering debate which had existed since the puritanical upsurge in Queen...

There was hardly anything in Great Britain which political thinkers on the continent of Europe in the eighteenth century admired more than its limited monarchy. But what were the limitations? Were they deliberate or not? Were they effected by acts of parliament or by the silent encroachments of usage? Did...

In the spring of 1643 William Lithgow, a Scot born in Lanark in 1582, who had spent most of his life travellingaround Europe, often on foot and having many fantastic adventures, decided to return to Britain. Having just turned sixty, he was obviously feeling pretty gloomy. ‘After long 40 years...

In the last weeks of his life Lord North, we are told, expressed anxiety about his place in history - ‘how he stood and would stand in the world'. This, he owned, ‘might be a weakness, but he could not help it'. It was a weakness one suspects that he...

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...

Michael Crumplin traces developments in surgery that can be directly attributed to changes in the conduct of war. Little doubt exists that war accelerates and innovates medical care. Today, our armed services can rely upon sound medical treatment if they are sick or wounded, with survival rates of above 90%. This...

From the ancient Mediterranean to the shelves of twenty-first century pharmacies and cosmetic counters, cold cream has a long history. In this article, Farhana Qayoom Shaikh explores how Galen’s simple formula for treating skin complaints transitioned over the centuries into a luxury beauty product.

Adams’ Grammar School, Newport, Shropshire, was founded during the Commonwealth in 1656 towards the end of the great impetus of founding such schools in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite many setbacks and threats to its existence it continues in the twenty first century as one of the 164 surviving...

In this article Josephine Glover discusses the long history of her ‘favourite history place’, the Buckinghamshire village of Brill. She explains how there has been a human settlement there since Mesolithic times. Using various fragments of evidence, she pieces together the extent to which the village was important to early...