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  • Thomas Paine

      Pamphlet
    The radical writer Tom Paine (1737-1809) has become a neglected figure, but this work argues that he should be rightly regarded as an original thinker, whose publications contributed to revolutionary discourses in America, France and Britain in the late 18th Century. He deserves to be remembered in the United States...
    Thomas Paine
  • The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean

      Historian article
    The Duchy of Courland’s attempts to establish outposts in the Caribbean and Africa were not the only Baltic ventures across the Atlantic during the seventeenth century. However, the expeditions of the small vassal dukedom were possibly the most unlikely. The article introduces the motivations behind the Couronian colonial project, as...
    The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean
  • Harriet Kettle, Victorian rebel

      Historian article
    Harriet Kettle had a remarkable life. She was on the receiving end of everything that the institutions of social control in Victorian England could throw at her, but resisted, survived and fought back. Harriet’s defiance earned her references in the records of a workhouse, two prisons, two asylums and, in...
    Harriet Kettle, Victorian rebel
  • How Sweden almost became a nuclear-armed state – and why it didn’t

      Historian article
    This article examines the conditions under which Sweden considered and subsequently pursued nuclear weapons. After failing to secure the establishment of a Scandinavian defence union, the Swedish government initially viewed nuclear arms as an effective means to safeguard the country’s neutrality. Owing to technical limitations, reassessments on the value of such...
    How Sweden almost became a nuclear-armed state – and why it didn’t
  • Flight from Kabul: a historical perspective

      Historian article
    In this article, Matt Jux-Blayney compares the British retreat from Kabul in 1842 with the most recent flight of NATO from Kabul in August 2021. Matt explores the various similarities between the two campaigns and includes personal recollections from his service in Afghanistan with the British Army. On 6 January...
    Flight from Kabul: a historical perspective
  • History Abridged: Salt mines in Eastern Europe

      Historian feature
    History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles Towards the end of the Bronze Age, the climate across Europe began to warm. This...
    History Abridged: Salt mines in Eastern Europe
  • Real Lives: Rebecca West

      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: Rebecca West
  • Sir Francis Fletcher Vane, anti-militarist: The great boy scout schism of 1909

      Historian article
    Sir Francis Patrick Fletcher Vane, fifth baronet (1861-1934), a man of wideranging but seemingly contradictory passions and interests, was an idealistic but also hard-working aristocrat who played a major role in shaping the early Boy Scout movement in London. While the name of the founder of the Boy Scouts, Robert...
    Sir Francis Fletcher Vane, anti-militarist: The great boy scout schism of 1909
  • What did you do in The Great War? A family mystery explored

      Historian article
    Research into family history is well-known as likely to dig up some uncomfortable evidence. Nearly every family has had its bastards; nearly every generation has had someone on poor relief. We had both. But more troubling was my recent suspicion that a hundred or so years ago not one but two...
    What did you do in The Great War? A family mystery explored
  • The snobbery of chronology: In defence of the generals on the Western Front

      Historian article
    Faced with the testimony of the huge casualty lists of the First World War, the desperate battles of attrition, the emotive evidence of the seemingly endless cemeteries and memorials, the moving war poetry of men such as Owen and Sassoon, and the memoirs of those who fought, it is not...
    The snobbery of chronology: In defence of the generals on the Western Front
  • The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings

      Article
    How did King Harold II die at the Battle of Hastings? The question is simple enough and the answer is apparently well known. Harold was killed by an arrow which struck him in the eye. His death is depicted clearly on the Bayeux Tapestry in one of its most famous...
    The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings
  • Film: Acts of Union and Disunion

      An Interview with Linda Colley
    Professor Linda Colley CBE, FBA, FRSL, FRHistS is a British Historian and a Fellow of the Historical Association. At the start of 2014 she wrote and presented a BBC Radio 4 series about the Acts of Union and Disunion, now a book. Over the summer she came into the HA...
    Film: Acts of Union and Disunion
  • Scots Abroad in the Fifteenth Century

      Classic Pamphlet
    (Historical Association Pamphlet, No. 124, 1942) Dunlop's research into the occupations and attitudes of Scots abroad during the 15th century uncovers some surprising revelations about all members of the Scottish ex-pat society. She particularly notes the ‘scurrilous' opinions of the French regarding Scotsmen's behaviour. While Scottish diplomatists and envoys tended...
    Scots Abroad in the Fifteenth Century
  • The Great Spa Towns of Europe: a UNESCO World Heritage Site

      Historian article
    Catherine Lloyd introduces us to an international heritage initiative to celebrate ‘spa’ culture. From ancient times, people believed that gods and spirits brought the means of natural healing. Step back in time to imagine an eerie wilderness, a glade in a wood, or a pool by a river, where the snow...
    The Great Spa Towns of Europe: a UNESCO World Heritage Site
  • Real Lives: Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan

      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: Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan
  • Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns

      Historian article
    Trevor James offers a case study in how to define and identify inns as part of the historic urban environment. Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns had a remarkable and formative effect on its urban landscape, an effect which still endures into modern times. Topographers and...
    Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns
  • My Favourite History Place: Swarkestone Bridge

      Historian feature
    Trevor James reveals his continued fascination with this major Midland scheduled monument. Almost 40 years ago, my role as a Nottingham University extra-mural tutor took me to Melbourne in Derbyshire. For the first few weeks I followed a cross-country route to Melbourne, via Burton-upon-Trent, Woodville and Hartshorne, but, on a dark November...
    My Favourite History Place: Swarkestone Bridge
  • History Abridged: Libraries

      Historian feature
    History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles The collecting of stories through written record is one of the most important methods societies...
    History Abridged: Libraries
  • The secret diaries of William Wilberforce

      Historian article
    John Coffey shows us what insights can be gained from the diaries of leading abolitionist, William Wilberforce. The diary is a distinctively modern genre... In English, the first diaries date from the Tudor era, but it is in the seventeenth century that the trickle becomes a flood. Alongside the famous...
    The secret diaries of William Wilberforce
  • Old age care in the time of crisis: London in the sixteenth century

      Historian article
    In her lecture to the General Strand of the HA Conference, Christine Fox describes the successes and failures of London institutions in dealing with the sixteenth-century crisis of poverty and elderly care. In late medieval and early modern thinking, human life was divided into three stages; youth, maturity, and old age. The latter...
    Old age care in the time of crisis: London in the sixteenth century
  • The cultural biography of opium in China

      Historian article
    Zheng Yangwen shows that despite its association with trade, war and politics, opium was first of all a history of consumption. Opium has fascinated generations of scholars and generated excellent scholarship on the opium trade, Anglo-Chinese relations, the two opium wars, and Commissioner Lin. The field has diversified in the post-Mao...
    The cultural biography of opium in China
  • A woman of masculine bravery: the life of Brilliana, Lady Harley

      Historian article
    Sara Read introduces us to a woman who challenged expectations during the turbulent years of the early seventeenth century. In 1622 a pious young woman with a highly unusual first name, Brilliana Conway, sat at her desk doodling her signature on her commonplace book. She had lofty ambitions for her self-development...
    A woman of masculine bravery: the life of Brilliana, Lady Harley
  • Real Lives: The Russian hermit of Cornwall’s caves

      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: The Russian hermit of Cornwall’s caves
  • 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
  • History Abridged: The City of Alexandria

      Historian feature
    History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. Think Horrible Histories for grownups (without the songs and music). See all History Abridged articles One of the oldest cities...
    History Abridged: The City of Alexandria