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Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
Historian article
‘It is often said on the other side of the water that none of the exhibitions which we send to England are purely and distinctively American', exhorted Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in an unsolicited letter of September 1884 to ‘Colonel' William Frederick Cody (1846-1917). ‘If you will take the Wild...
Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
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My Favourite History Place: Brixham
Historian feature
Paul Brunyee writes about a surprising link between Brixham in Devon, and Napoleon, and the impact the arrival of Napoleon in 1815 had on the townspeople.
The waters and cliffs of Brixham, on the south coast of England, have played small but significant parts in the long wars against France....
My Favourite History Place: Brixham
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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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Reinventing the Charter: from Sir Edward Coke to 'freeborn John'
Historian article
When was Magna Carta launched on its modern career as a symbol of freedom and liberty? Justin Champion looks at the role of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century lawyers and politicians in shaping how we see the Charter today.
‘For every person who knows what the contents of Magna Carta actually...
Reinventing the Charter: from Sir Edward Coke to 'freeborn John'
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Magna Carta: oblivion and revival
Historian article
Magna Carta was to go through a number of revisions before it finally took its place on the statute book. Nicholas Vincent takes us through the twists and turns of the tale of the Charter's death and revival after June 1215.
The Charter issued by King John at Runnymede is...
Magna Carta: oblivion and revival
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Daniel Defoe, public opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union
Historian article
There is a tendency to represent Daniel Defoe as a novelist and satirical journalist who was at one point placed in the London stocks as a punishment. Ted Vallance's article broadens our perspective to appreciate Defoe's activities as a propagandist in both England and Scotland...
The September 2014 referendum on...
Daniel Defoe, public opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union
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Foreigners in England in the later Middle Ages
Historian article
In an era when there are great debates about immigration and what constitutes nationality, Mark Ormrod introduces us to a new research database which reveals that immigration was an important feature of economic, cultural and political debate in the period 1330-1550...
In the Middle Ages, the political configuration of the...
Foreigners in England in the later Middle Ages
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On British Soil: Hartlepool, 16 December, 1914
Historian article
Heugh Battery, a Victorian survivor, received a new lease of life in 1908 when introduction of an improved Vickers 6-inch Mark VII gun greatly added to earlier, far less telling firepower. The Victorian pile was refurbished two years later and a pair of the new cannon installed. In 1907, the...
On British Soil: Hartlepool, 16 December, 1914
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A Story in Stone: the Tirah War Memorial in Dorchester
Historian article
The Tirah memorial stands in a corner of Borough Gardens, a Victorian park in Dorchester, county town of Dorset. It is a granite obelisk decorated with a motif of honeysuckle and laurel wreaths standing 4.5 metres high on a square granite plinth. This in turn stands upon a circular concrete...
A Story in Stone: the Tirah War Memorial in Dorchester
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Bayeux
Historian article
Bayeux, 23 kilometres west of Caen, was the first French town to be liberated in 1944 - on 7 June in fact, the day after the landings. Yet its origins go much further back than that: its first bishop was consecrated in the fourth century. It became part of Normandy...
Bayeux
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Interpreting an early seventeenth-century cottage at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum
Historian article
The Weald & Downland Open Air Museum (WDOAM), which opened to the public in 1970, is one of the leading museums of historic buildings and rural life in the United Kingdom. It has a collection of nearly 50 historic buildings - domestic, agricultural and industrial - dating from the thirteenth...
Interpreting an early seventeenth-century cottage at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum
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Photography in Korea, The Hermit Kingdom
Article
Terry Bennett provides an introduction to the earliest surviving photographs of Korea. It is, on the face of it, remarkable how late it was before the camera ventured into Korea. If we accept that photography effectively began with Louis Daguerre’s invention in 1839, it was a full 32 years later,...
Photography in Korea, The Hermit Kingdom
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My Favourite History Place - Sackville College, East Grinstead
Historian feature
Sackville College almshouse in East Grinstead, Sussex, was founded in 1609, by Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset, when he wrote his will. He died 17 days later without seeing one stone laid, yet the College still stands, providing affordable accommodation for local elderly people of limited means. It is...
My Favourite History Place - Sackville College, East Grinstead
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The Yeomanry, 1913
Historian article
The Territorial Force, as formed in 1908, had 54 cavalry regiments organised in 14 brigades and known collectively as the Yeomanry. This meant that the Yeomanry consisted of 1,168 officers and 23,049 other ranks in September 1913 out of a Territorial Force which numbered 9,390 officers and 236,389 other ranks....
The Yeomanry, 1913
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Round About A Pound A Week
Historian article
In this edition, we begin a new occasional feature, where we explore a classic text that had a major impact both at the time it was published, and since. Alf Wilkinson discusses a book first published in 1913, and still in print, and explains why he thinks it is as...
Round About A Pound A Week
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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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Exploring the Cornish Religious Landscape
Historian article
The Cornish religious landscape shares one particularly significant feature with its Welsh neighbour to the north. The Celtic tendency to dedicate churches to very local saints is very strong in both Cornwall and Wales, with the church dedications frequently being mirrored by the place name. This similarity is, to an...
Exploring the Cornish Religious Landscape
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Historians in The National Archives
Historian article
The author of this article approached the Editor to give him a flavour of what might be found in The National Archives relating to political, secret service and civil service ‘interest’ in the views and activities of historians over the last century. It is certainly very significant that some of...
Historians in The National Archives
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Real Lives: Charlie Mitchell, Tuke's top model
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: Charlie Mitchell, Tuke's top model
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Papal Election and Murder
Historian article
Before the smoke clears: The longest papal election in history was marred by a brutal murder
Papal elections never used to be so short or easy. In 1268 Pope Clement IV died and the cardinals, divided between French and Italian factions, would be deadlocked for the next three years over...
Papal Election and Murder
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Travel
Historian article
Perhaps I should start by saying what impels me to visit remote places, and that means saying what I'm not. I'm not an anthropologist: I have attempted to read anthropological texts, and confess to finding them amazingly dull when compared with what they're attempting to describe. There are exceptions: Piers...
Travel
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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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Western Dress and Ambivalence in the South Pacific
Article
Michael Sturma examines an aspect of the cultural impact of the West in the South Pacific. ‘States of undress, or the partially clad body, invite particularly ambivalent responses.’ One of the main preoccupation’s of early European visitors to the South Pacific was the nudity or partial nudity of the indigenous...
Western Dress and Ambivalence in the South Pacific
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Joan Vaux: a remarkable Tudor lady
Historian article
Joanna Hickson is a hugely successful novelist, specialising in historical fiction, and she describes herself as feeling that she actually lives in the fifteenth century. For readers of The Historian she explores and explains how she developed her understanding and knowledge of a highly significant Tudor woman who is a central figure in two of...
Joan Vaux: a remarkable Tudor lady
