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Bertrand Russell's Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Historian article
'An attack on the United States with 10,000 megatons would lead to the death of essentially all of the American people and to the destruction of the nation.’ ‘In 1960 President Kennedy mentioned 30,000 megatons as the size of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.’ In the autumn of 1962...
Bertrand Russell's Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis
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Thomas Parkinson: the Hermit of Thirsk
Historian article
About the year 1430 the citizens of Thirsk decided that their ancient parish church of St. Mary was old-fashioned and unworthy of the developing town, so they decided to build a new one. As a result, over the next eighty years or so, they produced what Pevsner described as ‘without...
Thomas Parkinson: the Hermit of Thirsk
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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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Nutshell
Article
This edition of 'Nutshell' discusses David Hume.
Nutshell
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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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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 Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
Article
Dr Jacqueline Beaumont Hughes considers some aspects of the role of the Press during the Boer War. The conflict between Great Britain and the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State which slipped into war in October 1899 was to become the most significant since the Crimean war. It...
The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
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The Knights Templars
Article
Professor Malcolm Barber explores the rise and fall of the Knights Templars.
"The master of the Temple was a good knight and stout-hearted, but he mistreated all other people as he was too overweening. He would not place any credence in the advice of the master of the Hospital, Brother...
The Knights Templars
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Stalin, Propaganda, and Soviet Society during the Great Terror
Historian article
Sarah Davies explores the evidence that even in the most repressive phases of Stalin’s rule, there existed a flourishing ‘shadow culture’, a lively and efficient unofficial network of information and ideas. 'Today a man only talks freely with his wife — at night, with the blankets pulled over his head.’...
Stalin, Propaganda, and Soviet Society during the Great Terror
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1497, Cornwall and the Wars of the Roses
Article
Ian Arthurson reasseses the Cornish rising of 1497 on its 500th anniversary. On the 400th anniversary of this rebellion there was a good deal of agreement about the Wars of the Roses: ‘The slaughter of people was greater than in any former war on English soil ... The standard of...
1497, Cornwall and the Wars of the Roses
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Spinning with the Brain: Women's Writing in Seventeenth Century England
Article
Norma Clarke and Helen Weinstein consider new approaches to the presentation of women writers on BBC radio. 'True it is, Spinning with the Fingers, is more proper to our Sex than Studying or Writing Poetry, which is Spinning with the Brain; but, having no skill in the art of the...
Spinning with the Brain: Women's Writing in Seventeenth Century England
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The Insanity of Henry VI
Article
Carole Rawcliffe examines medieval attitudes to madness and the case of Henry VI. Mad kings are all the rage at present. The remarkable success, first of Alan Bennett’s stage play, The Madness of George III, and then of the widely acclaimed film version, has prompted a spate of newspaper articles...
The Insanity of Henry VI
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Cunning Plan 92: The Weimar Republic
Article
Teaching the Weimar Republic is rather like teaching the voyage of the Titanic. However much you stress the strengths of the Weimar vessel, they just can't wait to see it sink into the Nazi sea. I have found this problem to be so bad that many of them perceive the...
Cunning Plan 92: The Weimar Republic
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Inclusive approaches to teaching Elizabeth I at GCSE
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at GCSE
The events of recent years led many to reflect upon the diversity of representation of their history curricula, what they teach and how they teach it. In the autumn of 2020 the Historical Association convened a diversity steering group of key stakeholders in history education. Over the course of the...
Inclusive approaches to teaching Elizabeth I at GCSE
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Recorded webinar: Untold Stories of D-Day
Webinar
The HA has worked with film-maker, historian and Legasee ambassador Martyn Cox on a series of webinars looking at untold stories from the Second World War. Many of these stories are taken for the oral histories provided in interviews given to Martyn on film.
In this filmed webinar, Martyn goes...
Recorded webinar: Untold Stories of D-Day
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The Scottish Parliament by Robert S. Rait
Classic Pamphlet
This short pamphlet by the former Historiographer Royal for Scotland, Robert S. Rait, provides an introduction to the Scottish Parliament from its early origins to the Acts of Union of 1707.
The Scottish Parliament by Robert S. Rait
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Ideas on the Shape, Size and Movements of the Earth - Pamphlet
Classic Pamphlet
This classic pamphlet takes you through some of the key ideas on the shape, size and movements of the Earth as they changed over time from classical cosmology to the work of Galileo and Isaac Newton.
Ideas on the Shape, Size and Movements of the Earth - Pamphlet
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Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan
Article
Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan
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Recorded webinar: The People of 1381
Article
This lecture with Adrian Bell, Helen Lacey and Helen Killick introduces key findings of the AHRC-funded project The People of 1381. Which people and social groups were involved in England’s biggest pre-civil war revolt? How much can we find out about their lives: where did they come from, what actions...
Recorded webinar: The People of 1381
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Recorded Webinar: Ukraine and the Soviet Politics of Empire
Article
Recorded Webinar: Ukraine and the Soviet Politics of Empire
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Recorded Webinar: Female slave-ownership in 18th and 19 century Britain
Article
Recorded Webinar: Female slave-ownership in 18th and 19 century Britain
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Recorded Webinar: India and the Second World War
Article
Recorded Webinar: India and the Second World War
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Exploring the importance of local visits in developing wider narratives of change and continuity
Rethinking religious rollercoasters
The authors of this article take a well-known structural framework for students’ thinking about the Reformation and give it a twist. Their Tudor religious rollercoaster is informed by local visits in their setting in Guernsey – an area where the local picture was not quite the same as the national...
Exploring the importance of local visits in developing wider narratives of change and continuity
