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Out and About in Letchworth: A Social Experiment
Historian feature
In a previous edition of The Historian (110, Summer 2011) we highlighted the midnineteenth century achievement of the industrialist John Dodgson Carr in creating the holiday resort of Silloth as a place of resort and recreation for his workers, and the wider workforce in Carlisle. So the seeds of trying...
Out and About in Letchworth: A Social Experiment
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My Favourite History Place: Sutton Hoo
Historian feature
A Secret Uncovered, A Mystery Unsolved
Sutton Hoo is a sandy heathland overlooking the estuary of the River Deben in Suffolk. In Old English a ‘hoo' is a promontory, ‘sutton' is southern, and ‘tun' is a settlement. Historians have known for years that the fields were farmed in the Iron...
My Favourite History Place: Sutton Hoo
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Strange Journey: the life of Dorothy Eckersley
Historian article
Meeting in Berlin
Three days before the outbreak of the Second World War, William Joyce, the leader of the British Nazi group, the National Socialist League, was in Berlin. He and his wife, Margaret, had fled there fearing internment by the British government if war broke out. Yet as war...
Strange Journey: the life of Dorothy Eckersley
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Out & About in Swansea Castle
Historian feature
The ruins of Swansea Castle stand at the edge of Swansea's shopping centre and are generally ignored by shoppers and passers-by who just ... well ... pass by. But this was to change to some extent in 2012, and the HA's Swansea Branch adopted a very close relationship with the...
Out & About in Swansea Castle
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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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Marcus Morris and Eagle
Historian article
Marcus Morris and Eagle: Approved reading for boys in the 1950s & 1960s
The National Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London's South Kensington held an exhibition in the first five months of 2012 devoted entirely to British adventure comics of the 1950s and 1960s, many taken...
Marcus Morris and Eagle
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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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Cathars and Castles in Medieval France
Historian article
Almost exactly 800 years ago, in September 1213, a decisive battle was fought at Muret, about ten miles south-west of Toulouse. King Peter II of Aragon, fighting with southern allies from Toulouse and elsewhere, faced an army largely made up of northern French crusaders who had invaded the region at the...
Cathars and Castles in Medieval France
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How can there be a true history?
Historian article
"How can there be a true history, when we see no man living is able to write truly the history of the last week?" (Thomas Shadwell)
Indeed! Once when I had to give a talk in Spain, I found this quotation by looking up ‘history' in the Oxford English Dictionary....
How can there be a true history?
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The Historian 117: Historical Fiction
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Review - Lincoln
5 Editorial
6 "How can there be a true history, when we see no man living is able to write truly the history of the last week?" - Lindsey Davis (Read Article)
11 The President's Column
12 1066: The Limits of our Knowledge - Marc Morris (Read Article)...
The Historian 117: Historical Fiction
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Football and British-Soviet Relations
Article
Following the recent ‘Euro 96’ championship, Jim Phillips looks at two earlier international football tours which had major political and ideological connotations. In November 1945 Moscow Dynamo became the first Soviet football team to visit Britain, playing in Cardiff, Glasgow and twice in London. With English, Welsh and Scottish crowds...
Football and British-Soviet Relations
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The Historian 116: Devon's Militia and the Spanish Armada Crisis
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial
6 The Fall Of Singapore 1942 - Ted Green (Read Article)
11 The President's Column - Jackie Eales
12 My Favourite History Place: All Saints' Church, Harewood - Ian Dawson (Read Article)
13 1066 and all that in ten tweets - Paula Kitching
14 News from...
The Historian 116: Devon's Militia and the Spanish Armada Crisis
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The Fall of Singapore 1942
Historian article
Churchill called it "the worst disaster and the largest capitulation in British history" and the Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 has certainly gathered its own mythology in the past 70 years. Was it all the fault of General Percival; were the guns pointing the wrong way; did the...
The Fall of Singapore 1942
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How damaging to the Nazis was the Shetland Bus between 1940 and 1944?
Historian article
The Shetland Bus operation may be considered successful in that it supplied Norwegian resistance movements with weapons and took many refugees from Norway to Shetland, and that it managed to bind just shy of 300,000 German troops in Norway. However, because of this operation, forty-four men lost their lives, and...
How damaging to the Nazis was the Shetland Bus between 1940 and 1944?
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The Historian 115: The Long Winding Road to the White House
The magazine of the Historical Association
5 Editorial
6 The Long Winding Road to the White House: caucuses, primaries and national party conventions in the history of American presidential elections - Michael Dunne (Read Article)
13 The President's Column - Jackie Eales
14 Focus on Asa Briggs - Donald Read
16 My Favourite History Place -...
The Historian 115: The Long Winding Road to the White House
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Woodcraft Youth: the interwar alternative to scouting
Historian article
‘We should recognize once and for all', exclaimed ‘White Fox', a rebel London Scout leader, ‘that the ideas and ideals which may have fitted fairly well into the social fabric of 1908 [year Scouts formed] may be very ill-fitting "reach-medowns" in 1920'. During the First World War, the enthusiastic support...
Woodcraft Youth: the interwar alternative to scouting
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The Long Winding Road to the White House
Historian article
The Long Winding Road to the White House: caucuses, primaries and national party conventions in the history of American presidential elections
Almost the Last Hurrah
At last we know officially. In late August at their 40th national convention in Tampa, Florida, the Republican party formally nominated its candidates to run...
The Long Winding Road to the White House
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The Historian 114: TV: modern father of history?
The magazine of the Historical Association
5 Editorial
6 TV: modern father of history? - Bettany Hughes (Read Article)
11 The President's Column - Jackie Eales
12 My Favourite History Place: Mountfitchet Castle - Alf Wilkinson (Read Article)
13 Historical events or people in ten tweets - Paula Kitching
14 News from 59a
16 No longer "A...
The Historian 114: TV: modern father of history?
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New Universities of the 60s
Historian article
New Universities of the 60s: One professor's recollections: glad confident morning and after
Living history
How long do professional historians wait before writing about their own personal involvement in episodes of lasting significance in history? If they wait too long they are dead, and their evidence is lost. A striking recent...
New Universities of the 60s
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Robert Peel: Portraiture and political commemoration
Article
On 4 March 1856, during a debate in the House of Lords on a motion to form a ‘Gallery of National Portraits', the Conservative peer Earl Stanhope quoted Thomas Carlyle's view that ‘one of the most primary wants [of the historian is] to secure a bodily likeness of the personage...
Robert Peel: Portraiture and political commemoration
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Empires of Gold
Historian article
In 1660, the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa was established under the leadership of Charles II's brother James, the Duke of York. Founded as a slaving company, the Royal African Company, as it became known, also traded in gold. African gold was mined in the interior before being...
Empires of Gold
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Cyprus: another Middle East issue
Historian article
Although Cyprus, the third largest Mediterranean island, remained nominally under Turkish suzerainty until 1914, the British were established there after the 1878 Congress of Berlin. The idea then was that, from this base, Britain could protect Turkey against threats from Russia, while ensuring that the Turks reformed their treatment of...
Cyprus: another Middle East issue
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Neville Chamberlain: Villain or Hero?
Historian article
Perhaps no other British figure of the twentieth century has been as vilified or as celebrated as Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. In 1999, a BBC Radio 4 poll of prominent historians, politicians and commentators rated Chamberlain as one of the worst Prime Ministers of...
Neville Chamberlain: Villain or Hero?
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Have gun, will travel: The myth of the frontier in the Hollywood Western
Historian article
The Western movies that from around 1910 until the 1960s made up at least a fifth of all the American film titles on general release signified escapist entertainment for British audiences: an alluring vision of vast open spaces, of cowboys on horseback outlined against an imposing landscape.
For Americans themselves,...
Have gun, will travel: The myth of the frontier in the Hollywood Western
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Nazi aggression: planned or improvised?
Historian article
Read more like this:
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Kristallnacht
Anti-semitism and the Holocaust
The Coming of War in 1939
Political internment without trial in wartime Britain
Neville Chamberlain: villain or hero?
The Mechanical Battle of Britain
Since the 1960s, there have been two main schools of thought...
Nazi aggression: planned or improvised?
