Why did the British get pensions when they did? What part did the great social surveys (Booth and Rowntree) play? Was there something rotten at the heart of Empire? What part did fears of a Red Peril play? Was Britain slow, with Bismarck and even the Tsar providing some measures of...

Dr Michael Bush investigates the interpretations of the pilgrimage of grace. Our perception of the pilgrimage of grace has been largely created by Madeleine and Ruth Dodds and their magnificent book The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-7, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538 (Cambridge). Published in 1915, it has dominated the subject...

I wrote my last column shortly after the Great Debate. This time it is a few weeks after the AGM in Sheffield, which I much enjoyed, and I hope others did too. In recent years the AGM has become the main means whereby the HA can get together as a...

I am delighted to be taking over from Anne Curry as President of the Historical Association for the next three years. Anne has been a terrific president and I know her record of visiting local branches will be hard to match, but I do look forward to meeting as many...

My programme of branch lectures has now started in earnest, as I visited Swansea in F ebruary and Chichester in March to talk about the ‘Monstrous Regiment of Women'. This is the title of John Knox's diatribe against female rulers published in 1558 and it is a very appropriate topic...

The last three months have provided me with some wonderful opportunities to catch up with HA members. In April I got as far as Carlisle, one of my favourite places, to talk to the Cumbria branch and in May I went to Grimsby, where the branch was celebrating its 50th...

On 10 December an advance copy of a report (History for all) by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on History and Archives was publicised, which relied heavily on research and expert witness from the Historical Association. The report noted that ‘there is a great deal to be positive about in the way...

The last three months have been a very busy period for the HA. The consultation on the draft National Curriculum for History ended on 16 April and we remain in dialogue with the Department for Education on the revised proposals. In May the HA's annual conference was held at York...

The final version of the National Curriculum for History was published over the summer. It is pleasing to see that the improvements recommended by the Historical Association and other History societies have been included. There is now provision for longer chronological study at both Key Stage 2 and 3, as well...

As 2014 starts I am conscious that I am entering the last few months of my time as President. The past two and a half years have flown by for me, partly because I have really enjoyed meeting so many of our members at my talks and finding out what...

The recent dramatisation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall into a very successful television series, poses questions about the relationship between the past, fiction and the dramatization of the those perspectives on history. There has always been a powerful relationship between ‘history' and fiction, and the imagination. My own thoughts on...

It would be a pretty good bet to claim that many people in the UK - young and old - have heard of the sinking of the Marie Rose in Southampton Waters in mid-July 1545, its recovery, and now the splendid reconstruction and display in Portsmouth. I would also bet...

Recently I was fortunate enough to participate in an episode of the BBC Radio 3 debate programme Freethinking, which addressed the 500th anniversary of the publication of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. I was fortunate to be joined by John Guy, author of many important books on More’s career and two...

The autumn is upon us. And Poldark is back! The images of the beautiful Cornish coast around Treen, Porthcurno, and St Michael’s Mount are welcome visitor to the screen asthe grimy nights draw in. The television series, reborn from the novels of Winston Graham, and the earlier screen adaptations of...

Dr Jacqueline Beaumont Hughes considers some aspects of the role of the Press during the Boer War. The conflict between Great Britain and the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State which slipped into war in October 1899 was to become the most significant since the Crimean war. It...

The publication of the first volume of Paddy Ashdown’s Diaries in 2000 has focused renewed attention on the relationship between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party. From the first meeting between Ashdown and Tony Blair at the latter’s house on 4 September 1994, less than seven weeks after his...

The struggle for parliamentary reform between 1830 and 1832 has long been regarded as one of the decisive battles of British political history. The Tories lamented that the passage of the Reform Bill meant the destruction of the constitution. Middle class Radicals welcomed the Reform Bill as the instrument that...

Sir David Cannadine has written the book that tells the history of history in schools. On the podcast on this site he outlines some of his reasons for wanting to write the book and what his findings were. But alongside his name on the front cover are his research team...

Amy de Gruchy provides an account of a short-lived newspaper of the Conservative Right which published work by Charlotte Yonge. The Constitutional Press was born in March 1858 following the formation of the second minority Conservative government under Lord Derby. It was a weekly paper containing Parliamentary reports, British and...

Seventy years after the outbreak of the Second World War, British foreign policy in the 1930s remains as controversial as ever. While appeasement is now a byword for political failure, the reasons for its adoption and the responsibility of the statesmen concerned are constantly debated. In general, opinion looks unfavourably...