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The Institute of Historical Research
Public History Podcast
The following podcasts are from an interview between Dr Andrew Foster, chair of our Public History Committee with Professor Miles Taylor, Director of the Institute of Historical Research. The podcasts look at the work of the IHR - what it aims to do for the historical profession and wider public, the...
The Institute of Historical Research
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Exploring Twentieth-Century History
Article
For a long time, history curricula on the 20th century prioritised the narrative of a slide from World War I to World War II and fascism above many other topics. But the history of the 20th century is both far more complicated and far more interesting than that. For the historians writing here, the...
Exploring Twentieth-Century History
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Queen Anne
Classic Pamphlet
In this pamphlet, James Anderson Winn, author of a recent biography of Queen Anne, recommends a new approach to historians writing about this successful and popular queen. Female, overweight, and reticent, Anne has long been underestimated. Her letters, however, show how well she understood the motives of her ministers, and...
Queen Anne
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Film: The Kennedys and the Gores
HA Conference 2019 - Keynote Speech
This film was taken at the HA Annual Conference 2019 in Chester and features the HA's President: Professor Tony Badger who presented Friday's keynote lecture.
Find out more about the HA Conference.
In a country that prides itself on its egalitarianism and its democracy, it is perhaps surprising that family...
Film: The Kennedys and the Gores
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The Norfolk and Norwich Branch History
Branch History
The Norfolk and Norwich Branch - a short historyThe branch was founded in 1920, at the instigation of two local teachers, W. J. Blake (the father the famous historian, Robert, Lord Blake) and Walter Stephenson, the father of our most long-serving (1941-1962) president, Andrew Stephenson, who was himself a distinguished...
The Norfolk and Norwich Branch History
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Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
Historian article
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...
Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
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100 years of the 19th Amendment
US history
When the Founding Fathers of the US created their Constitution in 1787 (formally starting in 1789) they were keen to make the US a modern and fair place to live, a new start away from the restrictions of the Old World and its antiquated forms of rule. However, they also...
100 years of the 19th Amendment
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The Historian 146: Civilisations
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial (Read article)
6 The emergence of the first civilisations: many contexts, significant changes but is this the whole story? – Paul Bracey (Read article)
11 The many queens of Ancient Egypt – Joyce Tyldesley (Read article)
17 Out and About in Paestum – Trevor James (Read article)
20 Space...
The Historian 146: Civilisations
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Queenship in Medieval England: A Changing Dynamic?
Historian article
In the winter of 1235-6, Eleanor, the 12 year old daughter of Count Raymond-Berengar V of Provence and Beatrice of Savoy, left her native homeland. She travelled to England to marry King Henry III, a man 28 years her senior whom she had never met. The bride and her entourage...
Queenship in Medieval England: A Changing Dynamic?
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Podcast Series: The Early Georgians
Multipage Article
In this podcast Lucy Worsley of Historic Royal Palaces looks at the early Georgians, the changing relationship between Parliament and Monarchy and Court Politics under George I and George II.
Podcast Series: The Early Georgians
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My Favourite History Place: David Pearse explores St Petersburg
Historian feature
If you want to understand Russian history from Peter the Great up to at least the 1917 Revolutions, you have to visit St Petersburg. Like Versailles, St Petersburg was built for an absolute monarch, on an unsuitable site, at the cost of many labourers' lives. Unlike Versailles, it was designed...
My Favourite History Place: David Pearse explores St Petersburg
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Recycling the Monastic building: The Dissolution in Southern England
Historian article
The dissolution of the monasteries was one of the most dramatic developments in English History. In 1536, the religious orders had owned about a fifth of the lands of England. Within four years the monasteries had been abolished and their possessions nationalised by Henry VIII. Within another ten years, most...
Recycling the Monastic building: The Dissolution in Southern England
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My Favourite History Place: Mountfitchet Castle
Historian feature
In the first of an occasional series Alf Wilkinson, HA CPD Manager, explores Mountfitchet Castle, in Essex - his favourite history place.
As every schoolchild knows, William the Conqueror landed near Hastings in 1066, pursuing his claim to the throne of England. He was accompanied by the Pope's blessing, but...
My Favourite History Place: Mountfitchet Castle
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Aristotle and Dudley: what can books tell us about their owners?
Historian article
Books as evidence
The study of books as objects can reveal a great deal about their owners and the society in which they lived. By examining why the books were printed in the first place, and by whom; why they were acquired and for what purpose; how they were bound;...
Aristotle and Dudley: what can books tell us about their owners?
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Enter the Tudor Prince
Historian article
Shakespeare's identity is an issue historians normally avoid - with 77 alternatives to Shakespeare now listed on Wikipedia, it has become a black hole in literary studies. Denial of the orthodox (Stratfordian) view* that William Shakespeare was the Bard dates back a century and a half, but has escalated in...
Enter the Tudor Prince
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The mechanical heroes of the Battle of Britain
Historian article
The Battle of Britain is often described as the point at which the Nazi threat began to diminish and cracks began to form in Hitler's regime. The air campaign launched by the Germans in the summer of 1940 intended to wipe out the existence of the British Royal Air Force...
The mechanical heroes of the Battle of Britain
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Film: Religion and Tudor Royal Authority – discussion
Development of Tudor Royal Authority film series
In this film Professor Sue Doran, Jesus College, University of Oxford and Professor Steven Gunn, Merton College, University of Oxford, look at the role religion played in defining the reigns and authority of the Tudor monarchs.
Film: Religion and Tudor Royal Authority – discussion
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Sir Francis Dent and the First World War
Historian article
Not your typical soldier, not your typical service
The term ‘citizen soldier' evokes a particularly powerful image in Britain. The poignant histories of the ‘Pals' Battalions' cast a familiar, often tragic shadow over the popular memory of the First World War. Raised according to geographical and occupational connections, names such...
Sir Francis Dent and the First World War
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Women, education and literacy in Tudor and Stuart England
Historian article
To booke and pen: Women, education and literacy in Tudor and Stuart England
As a student in the early 1970s, I became acutely aware that formal provision for women's education was a relatively recent development. I was at Bedford College, which originated in 1849 as the first higher education institution...
Women, education and literacy in Tudor and Stuart England
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Faster, Higher, Stronger: The Birth of the Modern Olympics
Article
As the leading athletes of all nations prepare to come together this summer in Atlanta, the global communications media of the late twentieth century are constantly reminding us that 1996 marks the first centenary of the modern Olympic Games. The worldwide impact now made by these sporting festivals is all...
Faster, Higher, Stronger: The Birth of the Modern Olympics
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Formation of the Public History Committee
Public History Committee
The Historical Association is pleased to announce the formation of a Committee for Public History which held its first meeting in May 2009. Dr Andrew Foster, a member of Council, is the first chair of this committee and gave a brief account of its purpose at the AGM held in...
Formation of the Public History Committee
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Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism
Historian article
Christopher Hill, the eminent historian of seventeenth century England, was a convinced Marxist throughout most of his long and productive life (1912-2003). He embraced this secular world-view when he was a young History student at Oxford in the polemical 1930s and never lost his ideological commitment, even though he resigned...
Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism
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Towards Reform in 1809
Historian article
Two hundred years ago it must have seemed to some as if the time for political and economic reform in Britain had arrived. A number of the necessary conditions appeared to be in place:
recent examples from America and France showing how readily and rapidly established systems could be overturned...
Towards Reform in 1809
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The commercial architecture of Victorian Liverpool
Article
In 1857 the Builder enthusiastically described the thriving state of architecture on the banks of the Mersey: 'The impression from a walk through the principal quarters of the town, after visiting other towns, is that more [building of a superior kind] must be doing in Liverpool than at any other...
The commercial architecture of Victorian Liverpool
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The Eighteenth Century in Britain: Long or Short?
Article
W. A. Speck reviews an historical debate central to the interpretation of the eighteenth century in Britain. Few British historians treat the eighteenth century as consisting simply of the hundred years from 1701 to 1800. Until recently political historians tended to end it in 1783. Many textbooks reflect this treatment...
The Eighteenth Century in Britain: Long or Short?
