A personal reflection on Julius Caesar and the conquest of Britain Julius Caesar always brings to mind the famous dictum of Winston Churchill, ‘History will be kind to me, for I shall write it!' In his writings Julius Caesar provides a vivid and detailed account of his invasions of Britain in...

Neil Bates and Robert Bowry have chosen to tackle the issue of curriculum coherence by including local history, both as starting point for new students joining the school in Year 7 and as a golden thread running throughout their Key Stage 3 curriculum. In this article they explain the rationale...

Question: Who is buried in the box? Seeking a new and exciting way to introduce my Year 7 students to history, I looked to a practical solution. Ian Dawson once used a Thinking History exercise where students looked at the idea of ‘layers of history'. It was useful in structuring...

One of the gifts of the social sciences to history is the use of expository diagrams; but attention is rarely given to the history of diagrams. Maps - schematized representations of locations in spatial relation to one another - can be dated back to Babylonia in the late third millennium...

Public Museums, National Trust Properties and private homes across the UK contain thousands of antiquities deriving from the ancient Greek world. Many of these were obtained by those who ventured upon the Grand Tour, a cultural expedition to Europe undertaken by wealthy young men in the eighteenth and ninteteenth centuries. In...

In this series of podcasts Professor Thomas Harrison of the University of Liverpool examines the Persian Empire, life in ancient Persian society and the Greek-Persian War.

"How can there be a true history, when we see no man living is able to write truly the history of the last week?" (Thomas Shadwell) Indeed! Once when I had to give a talk in Spain, I found this quotation by looking up ‘history' in the Oxford English Dictionary....

In March 2020, when Covid-19’s lockdown restrictions saw schools closed to the majority of children, Carenza Lewis quickly began thinking of ways to help both teachers and parents. Drawing on extensive experience of enabling children and young people to learn from practical engagement in archaeology, she came up with a...

This classic pamphlet takes you through some of the key ideas on the shape, size and movements of the Earth as they changed over time from classical cosmology to the work of Galileo and Isaac Newton.

In this podcast Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol looks at Ancient British and Irish Pagan Religion.

In this podcast Dr Fiona Hobden of the University of Liverpool looks at what Greek myths and legends can tell us about how the early ancient Greeks saw their world.

In this podcast Professor Richard Bradley of the University of Reading looks at Britain and Ireland from their prehistoric beginnings to the arrival of the Romans.

In this series of podcasts Professor Peter Heather of King's College London looks at the history of the Goths, the Huns, the division of the Roman Empire and the fall of the Roman Empire.

In this set of podcasts Professor Mark Humphries of the University of Swansea discusses the life and significance of both St Peter and Constantine the Great, focusing on their roles in the development of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

In this set of podcasts Dr Mark Manuel of the University of Durham looks at the Indus Valley Civilisation.

In this series of podcasts Dr Federico Santangelo of the University of Newcastle looks at the rise and fall of the Roman Republic.

In this series of podcasts Dr Richard Hawley of Royal Holloway, University of London looks at the history of women in Ancient Greece and Rome.

These podcasts and the accompanying scheme of work provide an introduction to some of the key rituals of Ancient Greek religion. The podcasts are for advanced KS2, and KS3 students; Year 13 students (ancient languages) have also successfully used them for background, and they may be helpful in preparation for...

In this podcast Dr Ursula Rothe & Dr Colin Andrews of the Open University discuss how social, moral and religious life in Rome differed from that of ancient Greece.

In this podcast Dr Fiona Hobden of the University of Liverpool discusses what Greek tragedy and comedy tell us about the society of Ancient Greece and what has been the legacy of the great writers of this period.