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My Favourite History Place: Mandala House
Historian feature
Many myths surround David Livingstone and in this part of the world more myths about the man abound than perhaps anywhere else. We can only speculate on whether he fought off lions with his bare hands, shamed slave-traders into letting their slaves go with just a few words from the scriptures...
My Favourite History Place: Mandala House
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Beyond the boundaries of the Lake District
Historian article
This article responds to recent changes in the size and status of the Lake District National Park by considering the historical interconnectedness of the Lake District with the region that surrounds it. Drawing on visual and verbal responses to the landscape of the Lakes region, Christopher Donaldson reveals how historical...
Beyond the boundaries of the Lake District
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Black Death to global pandemic: London then and now
Historian article
Christine Merie Fox compares the impact of the Black Death on fourteenth-century London with our present-day experience.
In 1347, a terrifying disease was carving a path from the East into Northern Africa and Europe. Its entry point into Europe was the south of Italy, via merchant ships from the Black Sea. The...
Black Death to global pandemic: London then and now
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My Favourite History Place: The Beguinage at Bruges
Historian feature
Richard Stone introduces us to a quiet neighbourhood in Bruges which has played its part in the development of women’s independence.
Close to the Minnewaterpark, on the fringe of the bustling historic centre of Bruges, with its medieval buildings and atmospheric cobbled streets, the Beguinage is a tranquil haven. Cross the...
My Favourite History Place: The Beguinage at Bruges
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The ripple effect: reaching new readers
Historian article
Philip Browne tells the story of his continuing journey with an eighteenth-century sea captain.
My book had been published and for the first time I held a copy in my hand. A warm sense of achievement and relief washed over me. My work was done. Now with a little encouragement from...
The ripple effect: reaching new readers
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The Historian 126: The Battle of Waterloo
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial
6 The Battle of Waterloo: Sunday 18 June 1815 - John Morewood (Read Article)
13 News from 59a
14 Scum of the earth - or fine fellows? The British soldier in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars - Carole Divall (Read Article)
19 The President's Column
20 Medical...
The Historian 126: The Battle of Waterloo
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Real Lives: Alice Daye: mother of the English book trade
Historian feature
Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...
Real Lives: Alice Daye: mother of the English book trade
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History Abridged: Publishing
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
For centuries the only way the written word could be communicated was by it being...
History Abridged: Publishing
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Out and About: exploring Black British history through headstones
Historian feature
In what has become a very a topical article that was commissioned in late 2019, Jill Sudbury explores some of the known graves of the enslaved and formerly enslaved throughout Britain, and asks for help in recording others as yet unknown.
Along the bleak shore of Morecambe Bay, beyond the...
Out and About: exploring Black British history through headstones
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Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
Historian feature
Alf Wilkinson explores the controversial story of Maria Rye, who founded the Female Emigration Society in 1861 in order to take ‘surplus’ young ladies to Australia and New Zealand to work as teachers and governesses. As there was insufficient demand for these, she refocused her work on taking pauper children...
Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
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Britain and Brittany: contact, myth and history in the early Middle Ages
Historian article
Fiona Edmonds evidences the enduring links between Brittany and Britain throughout the early Middle Ages.
Every year many thousands of British holidaymakers travel to Brittany in search of beaches, bisque and bonhomie. As they board the ferry, they may notice that they are travelling from one Bretagne to another. The names...
Britain and Brittany: contact, myth and history in the early Middle Ages
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The last battle: Bomber Command’s veterans and the fight for remembrance
Historian article
Frances Houghton examines how and why the popular memory of the Second World War continues to be contested.
Early on the morning of Monday 21 January 2019, still-wet white gloss paint was discovered to have been thrown across the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park. The bronze sculpture of a...
The last battle: Bomber Command’s veterans and the fight for remembrance
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The peace treaties of 1919
Historian article
Over the last five years the Historical Association has run a regular feature in this journal about the First World War from some lesser-known perspectives. Its purpose has been to capture some of the stories not always told about that life-changing, society-transforming conflict. As the centenary of the Armistice has...
The peace treaties of 1919
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The Memory of a Saint: Managing the legacy of St Bernard of Clairvaux
Historian article
When Bernard of Clairvaux died in 1153, the Cistercian Order was faced with a problem. The self-proclaimed ‘chimera of his age’ had enjoyed an unusual and varied monastic career, as abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux and papal confidante, making him remarkably well-known for a monk. At the funeral the...
The Memory of a Saint: Managing the legacy of St Bernard of Clairvaux
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Gone with the Wind: a great book?
Historian article
HA President Tony Badger examines the historical context which shapes our understanding of Margaret Mitchell’s enduring novel.
I had been a historian of the American South for 50 years and like Ringbaum, I had a secret. I had never read Gone with the Wind. As I came up to retirement...
Gone with the Wind: a great book?
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Blurred Lines: the ever-decreasing distinction between fiction and nonfiction
Historian article
Everyone who studies history would love to visit the past. Few of us would like to stay for long, I suspect – if unfamiliar viruses did not finish us off within days, the superstitious locals might – but a visit would be nice. The ability to do so would settle a...
Blurred Lines: the ever-decreasing distinction between fiction and nonfiction
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The Historian 142: Hidden histories
The magazine of the Historical Association
5 Editorial (Read article - open access)
6 Hidden histories: landscape spotting – a brief guide – Mary-Ann Ochota (Read article)
12 Real Lives: Independent African – Joe Wilkinson (Read article)
17 Reviews
18 Fake news: Psy-war and propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66 – Geoffrey Robinson (Read article)
24 Hidden from history: how hidden are...
The Historian 142: Hidden histories
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History Abridged: Operation Black Buck
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
Just as the Naval Task Force had been dispatched in April 1982, days after the...
History Abridged: Operation Black Buck
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My Favourite History Place: Maiden Castle
Historian feature
In the six years I have been on the editorial board of The Historian I have enjoyed reading about many historians’ favourite places so it is fitting that I write my last contribution about mine. Maiden Castle is the largest Celtic hill fort in southern Europe. I forget when I first...
My Favourite History Place: Maiden Castle
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Out and About in Upper Weardale
Historian feature
Tony Fox introduces us to two battlefields and the work of the Battlefields Trust.
Stanhope takes its name from the ‘stony valley’ in which it sits. It is the most significant town in beautiful Upper Weardale. Like many towns in this area Stanhope’s growth accelerated in the nineteenth century as...
Out and About in Upper Weardale
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The Scottish dream of Darien
Historian article
John McKendrick considers how Scotland’s wish to create a trading empire was dashed and made the Act of Union of 1707 almost inevitable.
The Scottish dream of Darien
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Fake news: Psy-war and propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66
Historian article
Geoffrey Robinson explores a little-known episode of the Cold War where half a million people were killed and the Indonesian communist party was destroyed, aided and abetted by the major Western Powers.
Amidst all the talk of fake news and Russian meddling in US politics, it is easy to lose...
Fake news: Psy-war and propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66
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Peterloo August 1819: the English Uprising
Historian article
Robert Poole, historical consultant to the ‘Peterloo 200’ commemorations in and around Manchester over the summer, explores the latest research into those tragic events of August 1819 and their significance in the road to democracy.
On Monday 16 August 1819 troops under the authority of the Lancashire and Cheshire magistrates...
Peterloo August 1819: the English Uprising
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Linking Law: Viking and medieval Scandinavian law in literature and history
Historian article
Ongoing interdisciplinary developments have cast light on the surprisingly sophisticated world of Viking-age and medieval Scandinavian law and its wide-ranging influence in these societies.
In many ways, the Viking Age and its inhabitants are more familiar than ever before. From video games to television and films, new narrative frontiers and bigger...
Linking Law: Viking and medieval Scandinavian law in literature and history
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Does historical fiction matter for children?
Historian article
Can you remember a book from when you were young that took you to another place that was fascinating, intriguing and felt real but wasn’t Narnia? Quite often those books were historical fiction; sometimes they were more fiction than history and sometimes vice versa. While the Ladybird histories were some people’s...
Does historical fiction matter for children?
