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Fifties Britain through the senses: ‘never had it so good’?
Teaching History article
Maya Stiasny was faced with difficulties familiar to many of us. Her new Year 12 students were struggling to get to grips with a new period of history. They were not interrogating primary sources with sufficient vigour. Her solution, detailed here, was novel. Working on the rich social history of post-war...
Fifties Britain through the senses: ‘never had it so good’?
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Primary History summer resource 2023: Early civilisations
Primary member resource
Our free summer resource for 2023 is intended to enhance your subject knowledge about ancient civilisations. We have selected two articles from the HA journal The Historian that provide you with an insight into current historical knowledge.
The first article includes Sumer, Indus, Shang and Egypt, early civilisations that are identified in...
Primary History summer resource 2023: Early civilisations
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Teaching History 191: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 191
Please note: the print edition of Teaching History 191 will arrive with members in mid-July.
Has the materiality of the past been neglected in secondary school history? Many history teachers might be surprised at the question. After all, enquiries featuring social, economic and cultural realities have...
Teaching History 191: Out now
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Teaching History 191: Material Worlds
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
03 Editorial (Read article)
04 HA Secondary News
06 HA Update
06 Illumination or illustration? Using eighteenth-century material culture to develop evidential thinking in Year 8 – Eleanor Dimond (Read article)
18 Fifties Britain through the senses: ‘never had it so good’? Evaluating social change and continuity in post-war Britain...
Teaching History 191: Material Worlds
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Significant people: Mary Wollstonecraft
Primary History article
‘I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves’ – Mary Wollstonecraft
The National Curriculum gives the freedom to select any significant individual and many schools have already chosen those outside the commonly-used ones such as Florence Nightingale, Christopher Columbus and Queen Victoria. There is also...
Significant people: Mary Wollstonecraft
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Significant anniversaries: Windrush 75
Primary History article
It is 75 years since the ship called the Empire Windrush brought people from the Caribbean to begin a new life in the United Kingdom. Those who also arrived in the years leading up to 1971 are often referred to as ‘the Windrush generation’. Their contribution to Britain socially, culturally...
Significant anniversaries: Windrush 75
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The First Crusade, 1095–99
Historian feature
As Christianity had spread across Europe, Islam had spread across the Middle East. At the end of the eleventh century the relationship between the Muslim leader of Jerusalem and the Christian communities and travellers to the city fractured. Along with other key relationships across Europe, the Middle East and around...
The First Crusade, 1095–99
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The Historian 157: Out now
The magazine of the Historical Association
Read The Historian 157
‘This will be the American century’, declared the celebrated publisher Henry Luce in 1941. Luce, the son of missionaries, was brought up in China. As a child, he had witnessed the collapse of the Qing dynasty, and the subsequent disintegration of the country. He would probably...
The Historian 157: Out now
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Developing KS3 students’ ability to challenge their history curriculum through an early introduction of significance
Teaching History article
Offered five weeks to teach ‘whatever he wanted’ to Year 7, Andrew Slater decided that he wished to tackle the concept of significance head-on early in his students’ time in his school. He chose the expectedly unfamiliar substantive content of the Khmer Empire, challenging his students to justify the significance of...
Developing KS3 students’ ability to challenge their history curriculum through an early introduction of significance
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Teaching Robin Hood at Key Stage 1
Primary History article
The stories of Robin Hood, which date from the Middle Ages, are integral to an understanding of British history. Although historians have not been able to identify a single historical figure that can be called Robin Hood, rooted in evidence, the myth or legend of Robin Hood has had a...
Teaching Robin Hood at Key Stage 1
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Significant anniversaries: the infamous Beeching Report 1963
Primary History article
March 2023 sees the anniversary of a report that had profound significance on social history and which affected many parts of the United Kingdom. There is every chance that it had an effect close to your school especially if you are in a more rural or coastal area.
The Beeching...
Significant anniversaries: the infamous Beeching Report 1963
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The Mary Celeste: the history of a mystery
Historian article
Graham Faiella guides us through the historical evidence and literary speculation surrounding one of the ultimately unresolved incidents of recent times.
One hundred and fifty years ago, sometime between 25 November and 4 December 1872, the brigantine Mary Celeste was abandoned at sea somewhere between the Azores and the coast of Portugal....
The Mary Celeste: the history of a mystery
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My great-grandfather and the Italian Campaign
Historian article
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...
My great-grandfather and the Italian Campaign
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Investigating ‘sense of place’ with Year 9 pupils
Teaching History article
Confined to his home during lockdown in 2020, teacher Josh Mellor became eager to explore the history of the physical environment on his doorstep. After reading about different approaches to using environmental history in the classroom, Mellor decided to design an enquiry to explore the changing landscape of the Fens in...
Investigating ‘sense of place’ with Year 9 pupils
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Teaching History 189: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 189: Collaboration
Teaching requires many kinds of knowledge, which has many different sources. One of those sources of knowledge is other professionals. But history teachers are not simply passive receivers of settled bodies of knowledge produced by others. As the pages of Teaching History attest, there is...
Teaching History 189: Out now
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History Abridged: London’s women statues
Historian feature
History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles
We live in a seemingly iconoclastic age. Statues that were once part of the established...
History Abridged: London’s women statues
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The Historian 155: Women and power
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial (Read article)
6 Elizabeth I: ‘less than a woman’? – Tracy Borman (Read article)
12 A woman’s place is in the castle: two besieged noblewomen in medieval Scotland – Morvern French and Iain A. MacInnes (Read article)
17 Taj ul-Alam Safiatuddin Syah: a trailblazing Islamic queen – Khadija...
The Historian 155: Women and power
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School war memorials as the subject for enquiry-based learning
Primary History article
A visit to a local war memorial to coincide with Remembrance Day leaves a lasting legacy. Every year, groups of primary school children visit a war memorial in their town and village or local church, and increasingly benefit from educational visits to sites of remembrance such as the National Memorial...
School war memorials as the subject for enquiry-based learning
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Creating effective history displays
Primary History article
Having been an history co-ordinator for over 15 years, I was fortunate enough to be able to plan a wide range of history displays which covered multiple periods. I enjoyed it because, for me, it provided the opportunity to inspire, inform and provoke a response. When preparing a display, I would...
Creating effective history displays
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Significant anniversaries: the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb
Primary History article
“At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; re-covered same for your arrival; congratulation.”
When Howard Carter sent these words via telegram to his friend and patron Sir George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon on 6 November 1922, he had yet to fully appreciate...
Significant anniversaries: the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb
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History in England’s primary schools: What do secondary history teachers need to know?
HA Update
What’s been happening in primary history lately? Invited to write an update on this, I decided to identify some themes that might be helpful to secondary teachers.
As a senior lecturer in primary education with responsibility for history and as a member of the HA Primary Committee, I was able...
History in England’s primary schools: What do secondary history teachers need to know?
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Telling difficult stories about the creation of Bangladesh
Teaching History article
Nathanael Davies recognised that previous efforts to diversify the history taught at his school by weaving new stories into the curriculum had made little impression on his students’ assumptions about what really counted as history. Planning a new enquiry on the creation of Bangladesh was intended both to bridge a...
Telling difficult stories about the creation of Bangladesh
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Historical thinking and art education in Canada’s era of societal reckoning
Teaching History article
Michael Pitblado and Agnieszka Chalas, history teacher and art teacher respectively, describe how and why they responded to a call by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to engage students with difficult aspects of Canada’s past, including the forced cultural assimilation of Indigenous peoples through the Indian Residential School System. Having reflected...
Historical thinking and art education in Canada’s era of societal reckoning
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Teaching History 188: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 188: Representing History
History teachers are familiar with the challenges that arise as we try to help our students make historical sense of past worlds. Building historical representations of the past is imaginatively demanding – it requires ‘world-making’ and narrative expertise. The challenges are probative, not merely...
Teaching History 188: Out now
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History 377
The Journal of the Historical Association, Volume 107, Issue 377
Access all articles online (you first need to be logged in to the HA website and subscribed to History)
William of Tyre, Translatio Imperii and the Genesis of the First Crusade: Or, the Challenges of Writing History (pp 624-650) – Andrew D. Buck
Honour, Memory and Lineage: Remembering the English Civil War through Funeral Memorials...
History 377
