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Out and About: Locating the Local Lockup
Historian feature
If you are arrested for a crime today, you will very likely be taken to a police station and locked in a cell while officers decide if they have enough evidence to charge you. But have you ever wondered what happened to criminals and other disorderly folk – roughs, drunks...
Out and About: Locating the Local Lockup
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White City: the world’s first Olympic Stadium
Historian article
The modern Olympic Games were first held in 1896, but it was not until their fourth edition, held in London 1908, that they had a purpose-built stadium as their sporting and ceremonial heart. This article by Martin Polley explores the history of that stadium – White City. As well as...
White City: the world’s first Olympic Stadium
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Sweden’s forgotten revolution
Historian article
People are sometimes surprised to learn that for much of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, Sweden was one of Europe’s great powers. The revolution that transformed Swedish government following the death of Karl XII at the end of the Great Northern War is still less widely-known. But though largely carried...
Sweden’s forgotten revolution
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Real Lives: Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial: Edward George Keeling
Historian feature
Trevor James introduces a victim of an earlier pandemic.
As we explore churchyards and appreciate the range of memorials that are revealed, they convey a variety of emotions and other messages. Sometimes they still contain quite unexpected surprises.
The single Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial in the relatively remote rural Staffordshire village...
Real Lives: Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial: Edward George Keeling
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Eyam: the plague village 1665-66
Historian article
Richard Stone explores the self-sacrifice of a Seventeenth Century village during an epidemic.
History shows us these ‘unprecedented times’ are not that far from previous historical experiences. Lockdown, quarantine, self-isolation, ‘second wave’, ‘third wave’, airborne disease, churches closed; the Covid-19 experience resonates with the plight of the villagers of Eyam, three-and-a-half centuries...
Eyam: the plague village 1665-66
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Women’s friendship in late eighteenth-century America and its relevance to lockdown
Historian article
Rowan Cookson offers us the opportunity to compare our contemporary anxieties with a stressful era in American history.
Eighteenth-century women’s friendship is worth considering at this time. In my undergraduate dissertation, I concluded that white wealthy women’s friendship in eighteenth-century America equired long distance communication, involved labour and perpetuated race and class...
Women’s friendship in late eighteenth-century America and its relevance to lockdown
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Grave matters
Historian article
Diana Laffin considers what study of the styles, planning and planting of Brookwood cemetery reveals about nineteenth century mindsets.
Graves are serious sources for historians. There is nothing casual about the choices made at death: the size and design of the monument, the text on the stone, even the location...
Grave matters
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Real Lives: Tahereh (Tāhirih)
Article
Paula Kitching tells us of the incredible courage shown by Fatima Baraghani while campaigning for human rights, especially women’s rights in nineteenth century Persia.
Fatima Baraghani lived in nineteenth century Persia and was a poet, a religious leader and a campaigner for women’s rights. She was born sometime between 1814 and 1919,...
Real Lives: Tahereh (Tāhirih)
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Out and About in Haworth
Historian feature
Kimberley Braxton takes a tour of Brontë country, through Haworth and onto the iconic Yorkshire Moors that were central to Wuthering Heights.
Haworth is a place for walkers; even before you reach the breathtaking moors it is likely your legs will already be burning from climbing the steep Yorkshire terrain....
Out and About in Haworth
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Do historical anniversaries matter? Case study: Arnhem 1944
Historian feature
2019 has been quite a year for historical anniversaries – Peterloo 200, D-Day 75, Monte Cassino 75, Women MPs 100 years, Apollo Moon Landings 50 years and all following on the tail of four years of the First World War centenary – and that is not counting the anniversaries that...
Do historical anniversaries matter? Case study: Arnhem 1944
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A European dimension to local history
Historian article
Trevor James raises the prospect of broadening our approaches to local history to take a wider European perspective.
When Professor W. G. Hoskins published his The Making of the English Landscape in 1955, he taught us how to observe and understand the topography of our landscapes, urban and rural, and...
A European dimension to local history
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The Diabolical Cato-Street Plot
Historian article
Richard A. Gaunt reminds us that it is still possible to visit the site of a notorious conspiratorial challenge to Lord Liverpool’s government, and why this event was so significant.
At around 7.30pm on Wednesday 23 February 1820, a dozen Bow Street Runners in plain clothes, led by George Thomas...
The Diabolical Cato-Street Plot
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Havelock Hall: the East India Company college gymnasium at Addiscombe
Historian article
Trevor James emphasises the importance of this structure in England’s sporting landscape.
Tucked behind the houses in Havelock Road in the East Croydon suburb of Addiscombe is a seemingly unprepossessing building, known locally as ‘Havelock Hall’. Now converted into flats, it derives its name from its late nineteenth-century religious use,...
Havelock Hall: the East India Company college gymnasium at Addiscombe
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From Bedfordshire to the Arctic Circle
Historian article
Travelling from the Western Front to fight former Allies in Russia is not the usual story of 1919 for a British ‘Tommy’. Yet that was the story of some of those men still serving King and Country.
On 9 January 1918 the supplement to The London Gazette, an official paper...
From Bedfordshire to the Arctic Circle
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The Borgia: from fact to fiction
Historian article
For their meeting in September 2017 the Bolton Branch requested a talk on Renaissance Italy. What they heard dealt with the Italian portion of the Borgia family, led by Pope Alexander VI, though the topicality of Catalan nationalism meant that the principal figures were introduced with comment on the Italian,...
The Borgia: from fact to fiction
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Joseph Banks and his travelling plants, 1787-1810
Historian article
Jordan Goodman takes us on a botanical journey to the ends of the earth.
Joseph Banks never commanded a ship. In 1773, aged 30, he went on his last voyage, a short crossing from Hellevoetsluis, south Holland, to Harwich. Yet not only was the sea always at the centre of his...
Joseph Banks and his travelling plants, 1787-1810
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Film: London’s Dreaded Visitation – Epidemic disease in Restoration London
Presidential Lecture - HA Annual Conference 2016
This lecture explored the epidemiology of disease in metropolitan London, exploring by reconstructions of local impact in the various parishes north, south east and west of the City from Bills of Mortality, burial registers and the Churchwardens’ accounts which often allow a day by day if not hour by hour...
Film: London’s Dreaded Visitation – Epidemic disease in Restoration London
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Bismarck after Fifty Years
Classic Pamphlet
This notable essay by Dr. Erich Eyck, the most distinguished Bismarckian scholar of the mid-twentieth century was written on the invitation of the HA to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bismark's death. Dr. Eyck, a German Liberal of the school of Ludwig Bamberger, found his way to England in the...
Bismarck after Fifty Years
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Between the Revolutions: Russia 1905 to 1917
Classic Pamphlet
"The key question is this - is the peaceful renovation of the country possible? Or is it possible only by internal revolution?"This quotation succintly expresses the problem that faced both contemporaries and subsequant generations of historians confronting the development of Russia between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. The upheavals...
Between the Revolutions: Russia 1905 to 1917
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Religion and Party in Late Stuart England
Classic Pamphlet
The second English Revolution of the seventeenth century, the Revolution of 1688, ushered in during the next twenty-five years a series of changes which were to be profoundly important to the ultimate development of the country. Most conspicuously, the reigns of William III and Anne released Englishmen - though not...
Religion and Party in Late Stuart England
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Votes for Women in Britain 1867-1928
Classic Pamphlet
This classic pamphlet takes you through the Votes for Women in Britain movement from its origins to its eventual success, following the case for women's suffrage presented, tactics and strategies, the anti-suffragist argument, party political complications, international perspectives, the Pankhursts and militancy, the revival of non-militant suffragism, the impact of...
Votes for Women in Britain 1867-1928
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The First Crusade
Pamphlet
Nine centuries after enthusiasm for pope Urban's expedition to Jerusalem swept western Europe the phenomenon of the first crusade continues to fascinate. This pamphlet examines the nature of the crusades and the motives of those who joined it, describes the hardships of the long journey to the Holy Land and...
The First Crusade
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Nazism and Stalinism
Classic Pamphlet
Is it legitimate to compare the Nazi and Stalinist regimes? There might seem little room for doubt. It is often taken as self-evident that the two regimes were variations of a common type. They are bracketed together in school and university courses, as well as text books, under labels such...
Nazism and Stalinism
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In conversation with Elizabeth King
Historian feature
Elizabeth King’s Miracles and Machines (2023) is a vivid, searching account of a small sixteenth-century automaton – a robed figure, nicknamed ‘the monk’ – that walks, beats its breast, turns its head, and appears to pray. Co-authored with clockmaker David Todd, the book is at once a material history of an extraordinary...
In conversation with Elizabeth King
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Film: Khrushchev - Background
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Alexander Titov (Queen's University of Belfast), provides a profile of Khrushchev’s background and personality and how these influenced his politics and ideas.
Dr Titov takes us on a journey from Khrushchev's peasant beginnings in Kursk, his rapid rise in the communist party, his role in the purges, to...
Film: Khrushchev - Background
