Tim Brasier tempts others to visit the iconic Arts and Crafts Red House, home to William and Jane Morris in Bexleyheath, London.  This is a favourite historical venue of mine because it is so accessible. We literally live around the corner from the Red House in its location of the London...

16-year-old Daisy Black of Newcastle-under-Lyme School in Staffordshire was the Senior Award winner in the Spirit of Normandy Trust Young Historian competition in 2007. Having been judged the winner by the Young Historian panel, the Spirit of Normandy Trsutees were so taken with her entry that they gave her an...

This remarkable item by a student at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield was the winning Young Historian entry in the Key Stage 3 Spirit of Normandy Trust category in 2022. I’ve always known my great-grandfather fought in the Second World War, but never like this. When he left the army, he never...

Perhaps no other British figure of the twentieth century has been as vilified or as celebrated as Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. In 1999, a BBC Radio 4 poll of prominent historians, politicians and commentators rated Chamberlain as one of the worst Prime Ministers of...

The nine-day General Strike of May 1926 retains a totemic place in the nation's history nearly 100 years later. The Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill was among those who attempted to characterise it as anarchy and revolution, but this was hyperbole and largely inaccurate for, as Ellen Wilkinson (then...

In Nuneaton’s St. Nicolas Churchyard lies a sizeable, though not elaborate, flat gravestone. It commemorates Canon Robert Savage, Vicar of the parish 1845-71, his wife Emma and many of their children. This tombstone, like so many in our graveyards, reveals a wide range of historical information, recording significant detail about...

Last year marked the deaths of two world-renowned historical figures - Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela. Their obituaries reflected the marked contrast in the way the pair were viewed. Mandela ended up by being universally admired, while Thatcher was both adored and despised in seemingly equal measure. Writer Nigel Starck...

Asa Briggs died on 15 March, aged 94, leaving a wife and four children. What a pity that he did not live quite long enough to become the first leading historian to reach 100. But he failed at little else that mattered. He was an historian of the nineteenth and...

HM Inspector John Hamer reviews the evidence. In a lecture marking the 150th anniversary of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Schools, Peter Gordon recalled a nineteenth century HMI, the Reverend W.H. Brookfield. His circle of friends included Tennyson, the Hallams and Thomas Carlyle.

2020 has been an interesting year in many ways – both as a year to make history and one that has sought to tackle many representations of the past. The Black Lives Matter campaign that has taken on new energy across the globe in response to the killing of a...

In this new, occasional section of The Historian, contributors share their thoughts on matters of public historical debate. We invite our readers to respond, either by writing to the editors at thehistorian@history.org.uk or by writing their own opinion piece. Here, Lorenzo Kamel shares his thoughts on why saying ‘he was a...

What are the pitfalls and pluses of comparing historical figures with contemporary politicians? Chris Godden argues that recent comparisons of Donald Trump with one of his predecessors may be wide of the mark, but that a more illuminating parallel may be found with one of Britain’s most controversial nineteenth-century politicians.

Over a century after his death, interest in Oscar Wilde and his work is at flood tide, with unprecedented levels of publication and research about Wilde and his work. Wildean studies proliferate, much in languages other than English. Recent translations of Wilde’s work have included Romanian, Hebrew, Swedish and Catalan,...

Jenni Hyde was out and about in Derry in 2016 and describes how the sights of the city tell the story of a history which is so much more than just the legacy of the Troubles.

Kimberley Braxton takes a tour of Brontë country, through Haworth and onto the iconic Yorkshire Moors that were central to Wuthering Heights. Haworth is a place for walkers; even before you reach the breathtaking moors it is likely your legs will already be burning from climbing the steep Yorkshire terrain....

Explore Lyme Regis’ past as John Davis guides you on a historical trail through the iconic seaside town...

In an unusual Out and About feature, the Young Historian Local History Senior Prize winner Flora Wilton Tregear shows us what her local area can tell us about the history of public health. Taking the DLR out from Lewisham you pass through Deptford Bridge station towards Greenwich. Here my father...

Tony Fox introduces us to two battlefields and the work of the Battlefields Trust. Stanhope takes its name from the ‘stony valley’ in which it sits. It is the most significant town in beautiful Upper Weardale. Like many towns in this area Stanhope’s growth accelerated in the nineteenth century as...

Trevor James emphasises the role and importance of ‘messenger’ pigeons on the Western Front. Amidst the one-hundredth anniversary commemorations of the ending of the Great War, there has been a sudden burst of interest, in such varying locations as both Houses of Parliament and the Antiques Roadshow, in the role...

This article explores the Cardington airship hangars in Bedfordshire as reminders of Britain’s ambitious but short-lived airship programme. Built during the First World War, Cardington became central to the 1924 Imperial Airship Scheme and the construction of the R-100 and R-101. Celebrated as symbols of technological optimism, the programme ended...