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  • Film: Stalin - Rise to Power

      Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
    In this film, Professor James Harris (University of Leeds) discusses how interpretations have changed over the years regarding Stalin’s rise to power, and his transformation from rural Georgian to the ‘Man of Steel’ – Stalin. For many years, western interpretations were strongly influenced by his rival Trotsky, who defined Stalin...
    Film: Stalin - Rise to Power

  • Political and social attitudes underpinning the 1924 Olympics

      Historian article
    The 1924 Olympics in Paris are best known to many British people through the ‘Chariots of Fire’ film from the early 1980s. The film touches on some of the political and social attitudes prevalent in the 1920s and Steve Illingworth explores these issues further in this article. It is argued...
    Political and social attitudes underpinning the 1924 Olympics

  • The circle of Ulster literary male friendships of author Forrest Reid

      Historian article
    Eminent Ulster novelist Forrest Reid was a complex character, reflecting a variety of attitudes in both his writing and his private life. In this article Michael Kelly examines how Reid and his circle of friends aimed to navigate their way through the changes of the early twentieth century, in both...
    The circle of Ulster literary male friendships of author Forrest Reid

  • Film: Stalin - Early Life

      Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
    Joseph Stalin was born Joseph Besarionis dze Jughashvili in 1878 into a poor family in Gori, Georgia, part of the then Russian Empire. Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary while his own radicalism grew, before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction through...
    Film: Stalin - Early Life

  • Britain and the First World War: not just battles

      Historian feature
    When the First World War started in the summer of 1914 it began a series of events that would change the world for ever; it also accelerated changes and ideas that were already underway. In some cases, big issues appeared to be put to one side while the immediate needs of...
    Britain and the First World War: not just battles

  • Why White Liberals Fail: United States politics in an election year

      Historian feature
    Paula Kitching interview with Professor Anthony J. Badger about his latest book. 2024 is an election year in the United States. For many in the UK and around the world the US political system can be confusing, with simple processes seemingly more complex than you would expect. It is not just the system...
    Why White Liberals Fail: United States politics in an election year

  • ‘A little bird told me’: spies and espionage in the early medieval world

      Historian article
    Spies were a common feature of political, diplomatic and courtly life in the period of early medieval Europe. In this article, Jenny Benham explores some interesting contemporary representations of spies, in both literature and art. These stories and images reveal key features of the culture and practices surrounding these so-called...
    ‘A little bird told me’: spies and espionage in the early medieval world

  • Crowdsourcing the heritage of the Second World War

      Historian article
    Stuart Lee, Ylva Berglund Prytz and Matthew Kidd introduce an innovative project to capture objects and the memories they hold.
    Crowdsourcing the heritage of the Second World War

  • Bonapartism after Napoleon III: the Prince Imperial and Eugene Loudun

      Historian article
    Emperor Napoleon III of France was deposed in 1870 and then died three years later. His son, known as the Prince Imperial, lived in exile in south-east England. There he and his supporters kept alive ambitions for a triumphant return of the Empire. In this article, Ian Sygrave assesses the...
    Bonapartism after Napoleon III: the Prince Imperial and Eugene Loudun

  • In conversation with Nicholas Radburn

      Historian article
    The Historian sat down with historian Nicholas Radburn to discuss his latest book, Traders in Men, which examines the role of merchants in the expansion and transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the eighteenth century.
    In conversation with Nicholas Radburn

  • What do you do if your members don’t come to your events?

      Historian article
    Branch President, Sean Lang, explains how a radical departure from the traditional branch lecture programme is helping to revitalise the HA in Cambridge.
    What do you do if your members don’t come to your events?

  • Forbidden friendships: taverns, nightclubs, bottle bars and emancipation

      Historian article
    The modern gay-rights movement has its origins in a 1960s New York ‘bottle bar’, but as Ben Jerrit explains, drinking establishments have been centres of gay culture and social resistance for centuries. 
    Forbidden friendships: taverns, nightclubs, bottle bars and emancipation

  • The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

      Historian article
    The Nazis came to power in 1933 with an openly racist and antisemitic set of policies. In the years leading up to the start of the Second World War, those policies were carried out through legislation and governmental actions, with the support of many members of German society. Once the war started,...
    The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

  • Virtual Branch recording: Empires of the Normans

      Virtual Branch Film
    How did descendants of Viking marauders come to dominate Western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and Lisbon to the Holy Land and the Middle East? In this Virtual Branch talk Levi Roach, author of Empires of the Normans, tells a tale of ambitious adventures...
    Virtual Branch recording: Empires of the Normans

  • ‘Since singing is so good a thing’: William Byrd on the benefits of singing

      Historian article
    As the value of music education is again a topic of societal debate, Tudor composer William Byrd, the four hundredth anniversary of whose death is celebrated this year, was a powerful advocate of singing in early modern England, writes Katherine Butler. Tudor composer William Byrd (c.1540–1623) is recognised today not only...
    ‘Since singing is so good a thing’: William Byrd on the benefits of singing

  • A land without music?

      Historian article
    It is sometimes said that England was a ‘land without music’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – not so, according to David Fleming. ‘Between the age of Purcell and that of Elgar and Parry, we had to do without much musical life in our country.’ Or so wrote Simon...
    A land without music?

  • Arctic aspirations: Britain and Icelandic independence, 1917–18

      Historian article
    As it sought independence, Iceland gained a new significance for Britain during the latter stages of the First World War, writes Ben Markham.  At the turn of the twentieth century, Iceland was not an independent country. Isolated in the North Atlantic Ocean, it was nonetheless considered an integral part of...
    Arctic aspirations: Britain and Icelandic independence, 1917–18

  • Hearing the call to arms: Herbert Douglas Fisher

      Historian article
    The intellectual aristocracy of late Victorian and early Edwardian Britain constitutes a Venn diagram of familiar names – the Stracheys and the Stephens, the Wedgwoods and the Darwins, the Keynes and the Trevelyans. These affluent, upper middle-class pillars of public life espoused a secular, liberal view of the world. Their depth...
    Hearing the call to arms: Herbert Douglas Fisher

  • Crusade in Crisis: the Siege and Battle of Antioch, 1097–98

      Historian article
    On 28 June 1098, the forces of the First Crusade marched out from the great north Syrian city of Antioch to do battle with Karbugha, the Muslim ruler of Mosul. The odds were not in their favour: not only was the Muslim army vastly superior in size, but the crusaders had...
    Crusade in Crisis: the Siege and Battle of Antioch, 1097–98

  • Virtual Branch recording: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom

      The Black Crown
    How did a man born enslaved on a plantation triumph over Napoleon's invading troops and become king of the first free black nation in the Americas? This is the forgotten, remarkable story of Henry Christophe. Christophe fought as a child soldier in the American War of Independence, before serving in...
    Virtual Branch recording: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom

  • Anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War

      Historian article
    The Second World War saw the development of significant anti-Americanism in Britain. This article locates the centre of wartime anti-Americanism in the politics of Conservative imperialists, who believed the USA was trying to deliberately dismantle the British Empire in order to fulfil its own imperial ambitions. The Second World War...
    Anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War

  • Doomed to fail: America’s intervention in Vietnam

      Historian article
    Why did American military involvement in Vietnam fail?  In this article, David McGill explains why the United States never had a realistic chance of defeating the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies. The decision by the United States government to become involved in supporting the South Vietnamese government against the...
    Doomed to fail: America’s intervention in Vietnam

  • Facing the Revolution: the other Americans

      Historian article
    The American Revolution presented all who lived through it with difficult choices about allegiance, identity, and self-interest.  The responses of American loyalists, enslaved people, and Native Americans reveal much about the country’s revolutionary foundation and the United States of today. The American Revolution was at once universal and narrowly nationalistic....
    Facing the Revolution: the other Americans

  • Women and the French Revolution: the start of the modern feminist movement

      Historian article
    Luke Rimmo Loyi Lego explores the role of women in the French Revolution, and how their challenges to traditional gender roles laid the foundations for the modern feminist movement.  The study of the French Revolution is often restricted to its impact on the Enlightenment ideas of influential men such as Rousseau,...
    Women and the French Revolution: the start of the modern feminist movement

  • Muddy Waters: from migrant to music icon

      Historian article
    Matt Jux-Blayney explores the impact of the blues singer Muddy Waters against a backdrop of significant social and racial change in the United States of the mid-twentieth century. On 3 July 1960, a man from Mississippi was introduced onto the stage of the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. He...
    Muddy Waters: from migrant to music icon