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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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Out and About: Duke of Wellington statues
Historian feature
Dave Martin, recently the author of a book on the French Revolution, takes us on a journey to discover some of the memorials to the Duke of Wellington, and asks what they tell us about the great man.
The Duke of Wellington is so clearly a national hero that it is no surprise...
Out and About: Duke of Wellington statues
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Out and about in Bolton - Industrial Revelation
Historian feature
Despite its old name of Bolton-le-Moors, the history of Bolton is tied up with the Industrial Revolution. Its population grew from 17,000 inhabitants in 1801 to nearly 181,000 in 1911. It is well known that the damp climate of England's north west was perfectly suited to the textile industry, and...
Out and about in Bolton - Industrial Revelation
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Out and About in Stockholm
Historian feature
When Désirée Clary – wife of French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte – arrived in Stockholm in 1811, she was appalled. It was true that she would eventually become Queen Desideria of Sweden and Norway, her husband having been elected heir-presumptive to the throne the previous year. But she left her new capital...
Out and About in Stockholm
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Out and about in D.H. Lawrence country
Historian feature
Eastwood is a busy, small town, about twelve miles west of Nottingham. It lies just within the county boundary with Derbyshire. Its name probably derived from a settlement in a clearing of the old Sherwood Forest. It sits mostly on a hilltop, which is the meeting place for main roads...
Out and about in D.H. Lawrence country
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Out and About: Charles Darwin, a voyage of discovery
Historian feature
Dave Martin follows Charles Darwin’s journey from university back to his birthplace, Shrewsbury.
Cambridge
The bronze statue of Darwin as a young man perches elegantly on the arm of a garden bench in the grounds of Christ’s College, Cambridge where he was a student from 1829 to 1831. Of this...
Out and About: Charles Darwin, a voyage of discovery
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Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’
Historian feature
The Somerset town of Taunton featured prominently in the highly significant political and religious conflicts of the seventeenth century. Isabella Peach examines Taunton’s role in these events and the impact they had on the town. Her article is based on her winning entry in the 2023 Young Historian Post-16 Local...
Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’
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My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
Historian feature
The Tenement Museum is not remotely like any museum I had previously visited. It is an old tenement building where generations of New York migrants lived and loved, worked and had families before moving both on and out. The Tenement Museum tells the story of the Lower East Side through the...
My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
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Out and About in Washington DC
Historian feature
Not everyone loves the capital of the United States. To Ulysses S Grant, it was a ‘pestilential swamp’; to novelist Gore Vidal, a ‘city of the dead’. It is true that Washington still has its problems. The District of Columbia has the highest crime rate in the United States, and the...
Out and About in Washington DC
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My Favourite History Place: Berwick-upon-Tweed railway station
Historian feature
Glimpsed from the window of a speeding train, as it hurtles north across the Royal Border Bridge and towards Edinburgh, the modest station at Berwick-upon-Tweed would seem an unlikely spot for one of the most momentous episodes in British history; but step off the train, walk up the stairs, and allow...
My Favourite History Place: Berwick-upon-Tweed railway station
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Out and About on Uzbekistan’s Silk Road
Historian feature
“For lust of knowing what should not be known— We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.”
So wrote poet James Elroy Flecker in 1913, who had perhaps an unduly romantic view of what motivated many of Uzbekistan’s earlier visitors. A more realistic explanation was proffered in the thirteenth century by the Persian...
Out and About on Uzbekistan’s Silk Road
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Out and About in Hull’s Old Town
Historian feature
Sylvia Usher explores a hidden gem in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Wenceslaus Hollar’s map of seventeenth century Hull can be a street guide for the Old Town even today. Modern Hull sprawls along the Humber estuary with residential areas fanning out for three miles or more. Hull as it was...
Out and About in Hull’s Old Town
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Out and About in Madagascar
Historian feature
Madagascar is one of the world’s more intriguing destinations. If it is famous for anything – apart from sharing a name with a truly terrible film franchise – it is probably for its wildlife, much of which is found nowhere else. But whereas most people have at least an idea of...
Out and About in Madagascar
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Out and About in Wheathampstead
Historian feature
Dianne Payne examines the structural local history of Wheathampstead and provides a template for wider comparisons.
The rural village of Wheathampstead in Hertfordshire, situated about four miles from St Albans, lies on the River Lea. The village and surrounding land has a long history and in ancient times was owned by the...
Out and About in Wheathampstead
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My Favourite History Place: Queen Square, Bath
Historian feature
Some years ago, on the shore of Loch Lomond, I met a Scotsman. As we started to converse he asked me where I was from. When I replied ‘Bath’, his response was ‘Ah, the most beautiful city in Britain,’ adding, out of patriotism or good judgement, ‘Edinburgh is second.’
The Roman...
My Favourite History Place: Queen Square, Bath
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My Favourite History Place: Castle Hill, Huddersfield
Historian feature
Alison Hramiak tempts us to visit Castle Hill, south of Huddersfield, to look for traces of our long dead ancestors, to contemplate the passing of the centuries on that site and to enjoy the lovely views.
It’s often the way that we ignore what’s geographically close to us when we visit...
My Favourite History Place: Castle Hill, Huddersfield
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Out and About in Cairo
Historian feature
Nicolas Kinloch guides us round the fascinating city of Cairo.
Cairo has always been a traveller’s destination. That indefatigable explorer, ibn Battuta, arrived there in 1326, and declared that it was ‘boundless in its multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendour...extending a friendly welcome to strangers’. Most of this is...
Out and About in Cairo
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My Favourite History Place: St James Church, Gerrards Cross
Historian feature
Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, is a well-to-do town in the Chilterns and a wealthy commuter dormitory for London. It also harbours what might be one of the most remarkable, under-appreciated churches of the mid-nineteenth century. St James, the parish church, was built for the ‘unruled and unruly’ agricultural labourers and traders who inhabited...
My Favourite History Place: St James Church, Gerrards Cross
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Out and About: the central Marches of Wales and the Mortimer family of Wigmore
Historian feature
Paul Dryburgh and Philip Hume enable us to see the interaction of one prominent family with the area that they dominated.
The central Marches span the English/Welsh border in an area that encompasses the picturesque landscapes and market towns of north-west Herefordshire, south-west Shropshire, and Radnorshire which has also the rugged...
Out and About: the central Marches of Wales and the Mortimer family of Wigmore
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My Favourite History Place: The Chantry Chapel of St Mary on Wakefield Bridge
Historian feature
Wakefield Bridge Chapel, by the River Calder, is thought by many to be the finest of four bridge chantries, the others being Bradford-on-Avon, Derby and Rotherham. The chapel at Wakefield was originally founded and endowed by the people of Wakefield and district between 1342 and 1359.
In 1397 Edmund de Langley,...
My Favourite History Place: The Chantry Chapel of St Mary on Wakefield Bridge
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Out and About: Tynemouth Priory
Historian feature
Approximately 10 miles east of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and just over 10 minutes walk from my home, the imposing ruins of Tynemouth Priory command sea, river, and land from the promontory between King Edward’s Bay and Prior’s Haven. While the Priory dates back to the eleventh century, the headland on which it sits,...
Out and About: Tynemouth Priory
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Out and About on the Isle of Man
Historian article
Caroline Smith introduces us to the delights in the south of her home island.
The Isle of Man has had mixed fortunes as a tourist destination. It first attracted visitors in the early nineteenth century and had its heyday in 1913. In that year, over 600,000 holidaymakers came during the...
Out and About on the Isle of Man
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My Favourite History Place - Barnard Castle
Historian article
Paula Kitching invites us to look at Barnard Castle with new eyes.
Over the summer there was a lot of talk about Barnard Castle – I won’t go into the politics, but it did make me reflect on the actual town of Barnard Castle. Growing up, it was one of...
My Favourite History Place - Barnard Castle
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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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Out and About in Paestum
Historian feature
Trevor James introduces the extraordinary archaeological remains from Greek and Roman occupation to be found at Paestum.
Paestum is the more recent name of a location originally known as Poseidonia, named in honour of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. Poseidonia was a Greek settlement or colony on the west...
Out and About in Paestum
