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The Origins of the Local Government Service
Historian article
The concept ‘local government’ dates only from the middle of the nineteenth century. ‘Local government service’ emerged later still. In 1903 Redlich and Hirst1 wrote of ‘municipal officers’, while in 1922 Robson2 preferred ‘the municipal civil service’. ‘Local government service’ perhaps derives its pedigree from its use in the final...
The Origins of the Local Government Service
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Women and Gender in the French Wars
The Napoleonic Wars
In this podcast Dr Louise Carter critically examines the role of women in Britain during the French Revolution. During these wars, women were typically called on for army cooking, laundry, nursing and spying, and as such were considered part of the war machine. While women in the French wars accounted for...
Women and Gender in the French Wars
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The Gallipoli Memorial, Eltham
Historian article
On April 13 2000 the Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend Richard Harris, gave the final Gallipoli Memorial Lecture in the Gallipoli Memorial Chapel at Holy Trinity Church, Eltham. The National Gallipoli Memorial was established there due to the effort and enthusiasm of Holy Trinity’s Vicar, the Reverend Henry Hall,...
The Gallipoli Memorial, Eltham
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The Rainbow Circle and the New Liberalism
Historian article
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 Rainbow Circle and the New Liberalism
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Myth and Reality: A Necessary Marriage at Twelfth Century Glastonbury
Article
It is the habitation of strangers and the domination of foreigners. There is today no Englishman who is either earl, bishop or abbot. The newcomers devour the riches and entrails of England, and there is no hope of the misery coming to an end…the fatal day for England, the mournful...
Myth and Reality: A Necessary Marriage at Twelfth Century Glastonbury
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The Duke of Wellington and the little man on the cob
Article
On 24th March, 1843, the painter, Benjamin Robert Haydon, wrote down an odd story, told to him earlier that evening by his friend, the sculptor, John Carew. The anecdote was already at least three removes from its original source, the Duke of Wellington, and concerned events that had taken place...
The Duke of Wellington and the little man on the cob
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Novelty and Amusement? Visiting the Georgian Country House
Article
The best-known country house visit in literature is that to Pemberley of Elizabeth Bennet, accompanied by her uncle and aunt Gardiner. Few events make better costume drama: personal and class unease, historic dress and carriages, grand house and landscape park. But beneath the tension of Elizabeth’s unexpected meeting with Darcy,...
Novelty and Amusement? Visiting the Georgian Country House
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'The Mouth of Hell': Religious Discord at Brailes, Warwickshire, C.1660-c.1800
Article
Colin Haydon explores religious intolerance and conflict in an English village. In recent years, many historians have explored the subject of religious intolerance, and particularly anti-Catholic sentiment, in early modern and modern England. The political allegiance of ‘Papists’ was suspect: was not their allegiance to the Pope – to ‘another...
'The Mouth of Hell': Religious Discord at Brailes, Warwickshire, C.1660-c.1800
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'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
Article
Notwithstanding the tribal hatred recently shown for each other by a handful of English and Turkish football fanatics, nobody who has travelled in Turkey or taken a holiday in that country can have failed to notice the courtesy and generosity with which visitors are invariably treated. Indeed, one of the...
'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
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Eighteenth-century Britain and its Empire
Article
The concept of an ‘English’ or even of a ‘British’ empire has been in use at least from the sixteenth century. What the term then conveyed was of course very different from what it was to convey in modern times. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, contemporaries were beginning to envisage...
Eighteenth-century Britain and its Empire
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The Wonderful Land of Oz
Article
In the year of the centenary of the first publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L.Frank Baum, Douglas Horlock considers its political and intellectual context. On 7 May 1898, Frank Baum sat down in his Chicago home with a group of children including his sons. As on other...
The Wonderful Land of Oz
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Bombing and the Air War on the Italian Front 1915-1918
Article
During the First World War air operations were on a much smaller scale on the Italian front than in France and Flanders. Italian fighter pilots claimed to have shot down fewer than a tenth of the number of enemy aircraft officially credited to German fighter pilots operating over the Western...
Bombing and the Air War on the Italian Front 1915-1918
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William Morris, Art and the Rise of the British Labour Movement
Article
Commenting in early 1934 at the University College, Hull, at the time of the centenary of William Morris’ birth and of a large exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the historian and active socialist, G.D.H. Cole commented, William Morris’ influence is very much alive today: but let us not...
William Morris, Art and the Rise of the British Labour Movement
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Cholera and the Fight for Public Health Reform in Mid-Victorian England
Article
Of the many social changes that occurred during the Victorian age, public health reform is widely agreed to be one of the most significant. In the early Victorian era the vast majority of Britons drank water from murky ponds and rivers, carried to their dwellings in buckets; and their excrement...
Cholera and the Fight for Public Health Reform in Mid-Victorian England
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The 1650s
Historian article
The 1630s in England began effectively in 1629 with the abrupt dismissal of Charles I’s third parliament and ended in 1640 at the first meeting of what would become the Long Parliament. Similarly we may start the 1650s with the regicide of January 1649 and finish with the surprising return...
The 1650s
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Cooling Memories? Why We Still Remember Scott And Shackleton
Historian article
Just along from the grand lobby of the new British Library, on the left up a broad staircase, there is a half concealed doorway. Walk through the doors and you enter a low gallery, dimly lit and filled with expansive display cases. There is always a hush in this room...
Cooling Memories? Why We Still Remember Scott And Shackleton
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'Wanted, The Elusive Charlie Peace': A Sheffield Killer Of The 1870s As Popular Hero
Historian article
On 28 November 1876, William and John Habron, Irish brothers habitually in trouble with the police, were tried at Manchester Assizes for the murder three months before of Police Constable Nicholas Cock (on the basis of ‘scientific’ footprint evidence at the scene of the crime). The jury found 19 year-old...
'Wanted, The Elusive Charlie Peace': A Sheffield Killer Of The 1870s As Popular Hero
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Louis, John, and William: the 'Dame Europa' pamphlets, 1870-1871
Article
The pamphlet printing industry in England received an unexpected boost in 1871 with the appearance of numerous works written, mainly, as commentaries, satires or allegories in Britain’s attitude regarding the Franco-Prussian War. The cause of this deluge was one particular tract, first issued on Salisbury in October 1870, whose purpose...
Louis, John, and William: the 'Dame Europa' pamphlets, 1870-1871
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What's New About New Labour?
Historian article
In the 1980s it was often argued that the Labour party was finished as a major force in British politics. Yet on 1st May 1997 it won a landslide victory, securing an overall majority of 179 in parliament. Two years into its term of office, it retains a strong lead...
What's New About New Labour?
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Why did People Choose Sides in the English Civil War?
Article
This paper was delivered at the British Library on 30th January 1999 at a joint meeting to commemerate the 350th anniversary of the execution of Charles I.
Why did People Choose Sides in the English Civil War?
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Durham
Article
Emeritus Professor G. R. Batho a personal perspective on the city of the prince bishops. We all have highly personal impressions of the towns and cities with which we are familiar. Few readers of The Historian are likely to emulate the good lady who hearing that I was leaving the...
Durham
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Sir William Petty: Scientist, Economist, Inventor, 1623-1687
Article
In December 1687 Sir William Petty, a founder member, attended the annual dinner of the Royal Society. He was obviously seriously ill and in 'greate pain' and shortly afterwards, on December 16th, he died in his house in Piccadilly, opposite St James Church. It was a quiet end to a...
Sir William Petty: Scientist, Economist, Inventor, 1623-1687
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Britain and the Formation of NATO
Article
Carl Watts outlines the shift in British security policy and examines the role played by the Foreign Office during the post-War period. April 1999 marks the 50th anniversary of the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty, which came into effect in August 1949. The Cold War is over, but NATO...
Britain and the Formation of NATO
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The Vikings in Britain
Historian Article
Professor Henry Loyn provides an update on recent studies of the Viking Age. Interest in the activities of the Scandinavian people in Britain during the Viking Age, c 800-1100 A.D., has been strong in the last half-century or so, and it is good to pause and assess contributions to the...
The Vikings in Britain
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Cambridge
Article
Elisabeth Leedham-Green reflects on reality in the famous university town of Cambridge. This is a sharp place, best encountered when, as surprisingly often, the sun is shining and there is frost in the air. Then the stone sparkles and seems to float a few inches above the gleaming grass —...
Cambridge
