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In conversation with Tom Hamilton
Historian feature
The Historian sat down with Tom Hamilton to discuss his recent work, A Widow’s Vengeance after the Wars of Religion, which uncovers the story of a revealing criminal trial during the French Wars of Religion...
In conversation with Tom Hamilton
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Film: From Khrushchev to Brezhnev
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film Dr Edwin Bacon reflects upon the instability of the Khrushchev era and how Brezhnev positioned himself as the perfect replacement for a Soviet Communist party desperate for stability in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis. Brezhnev would be the first amongst equals looking to move forward...
Film: From Khrushchev to Brezhnev
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Film: Brezhnev's early life and career
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film Dr Edwin Bacon takes us through Brezhnev’s early life and career: his birth in Ukraine in 1906, the opportunities brought by the revolution, his role in the battle of Ukraine and his eventual arrival to the Politburo at the end of the 1950s. Dr Bacon looks at...
Film: Brezhnev's early life and career
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Film: Lenin and the Russian Civil War
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Revolution is never simple. Lenin and the Bolsheviks quickly found that not everyone in Russia or outside of it approved of their new radical agenda. Russia was plunged into a civil war of devastating circumstances. How would its new leader manage and how much were the needs of the people...
Film: Lenin and the Russian Civil War
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Film: Lenin and the birth of Soviet Russia
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Having changed the course of Russian society Lenin now needed to secure his Bolshevik survival. Unlike his predecessor he saw no need to continue with the Imperialist policies of a war in Europe. Territory could be sacrificed for control, but would promises and rhetoric be enough to govern among people...
Film: Lenin and the birth of Soviet Russia
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Film: Lenin and the 1917 Revolutions
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
You wait a lifetime for a revolution and then two come along at once! Such was 1917 in Russia. As the world seemed in chaos and Russia and the Russian people began to collapse, Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw their opportunity and overthrew the government to create the first communist...
Film: Lenin and the 1917 Revolutions
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Film: Lenin, the 1905 Russian Revolution and WWI
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
The founders of Communism, Marx and Engels, had created a set of social structures and industrial developments that were believed necessary for Communism to be achieved. Imperial Russia did not fit these conditions and yet at the start of the twentieth century Russian revolutionaries were some of the most active...
Film: Lenin, the 1905 Russian Revolution and WWI
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Film: Lenin's early thought
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
As Lenin’s own political outlook and beliefs developed so did the European movements of Socialism and Communism. Groups emerged that wanted to radically change society and social structures. Lenin positioned himself as one of the leaders and crucially one of the thinkers behind these new ideas and movements.
Dr Lara...
Film: Lenin's early thought
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The Ancient Kingdom of Nabataea
Historian article
The Kingdom of Nabataea was an important independent entity in the Arabian desert from the third century B.C. to the early second century A.D. Written records are very sparse, so historians need to draw their conclusions from surviving buildings, archaeological excavations and a study of coins. Here Tom Dunstan analyses the extent to which...
The Ancient Kingdom of Nabataea
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The Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)
Historian article
The Exclusion Crisis in the reign of King Charles II was a fierce struggle over the issue of whether the King’s Catholic brother James should be the heir to the throne. At the same time, circumstances promoted an outpouring of polemical pamphlets on a massive scale. Here Gregory Gifford examines...
The Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)
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‘The Nazi Service’? The Prussian origins of the Luftwaffe
Historian article
The Luftwaffe had been a real achievement of Prussian military culture, but under poor Nazi leadership it degenerated into an ineffective fighting force, writes Stephen Graham.
‘The Nazi Service’? The Prussian origins of the Luftwaffe
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Recruiting volunteers to fight in the First World War
Historian article
‘Your Country Needs You’ and other posters are still remembered today as a prominent vehicle by which men were encouraged to fight in the First World War. Virtually absent from the literature, however, is analysis of the impact of thousands of recruitment meetings and their speakers. Robert Bullard explores the contribution...
Recruiting volunteers to fight in the First World War
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Real Lives: Colonel James Skinner
Historian feature
The story of the British in India is a complex one and further nuances are provided by the existence of several ‘Eurasians’ who had both British and Indian heritage. Here Arunansh Goswami reflects on the life and achievements of one of these, James Skinner, who had a Scottish father and an Indian...
Real Lives: Colonel James Skinner
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Out and About: The Parish Armoury in St Mary’s Church, Mendlesham
Historian feature
In the Tudor and early Stuart period most towns and villages had a legal obligation to store arms and armour in case of a national emergency. Here Shona Rutherford-Edge tells the story of the parish armoury in the Suffolk village of Mendlesham, which was kept in the local church and from which many...
Out and About: The Parish Armoury in St Mary’s Church, Mendlesham
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Film: A conversation on Goethe with A.N. Wilson
Article
In Goethe: His Faustian life, award-winning biographer, critic and writer A. N. Wilson tells the spellbinding story of the life of Goethe. From his youth as a wild literary prodigy, to his later years as Germany’s most heroic intellectual figure, Wilson hones in on Goethe’s undying obsession with the work he would spend his...
Film: A conversation on Goethe with A.N. Wilson
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Film: Lenin's origins
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in 1870. This film takes us through his middle-class origins, how he was radicalised by the world he saw around him, especially following the execution of his brother, and how the future politician and revolutionary developed amongst the extremes of Imperial Russian society.
In...
Film: Lenin's origins
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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
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Bristol and the Slave Trade
Classic Pamphlet
Captain Thomas Wyndham of Marshfield Park in Somerset was on voyage to Barbary where he sailed from Kingroad, near Bristol, with three ships full of goods and slaves thus beginning the association of African Trade and Bristol. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bristol was not a place of...
Bristol and the Slave Trade
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Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
Article
Red Lion Square was long one of London's most genteel addresses, home to nobles, scholars, and professionals. But on 25 March 1818, one house on the south side opened its doors to quite another class of person, as the Mendicity Society began its business. Set up to solve the growing...
Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
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Film: Yeltsin and the West
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), looks how the positive relationship established between Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan and his successor President Bush continued with the ascension of Yeltsin to the presidency of Russia. Dr Bacon discusses how Russian perceptions of the West changed with the expansion...
Film: Yeltsin and the West
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Film: Yeltsin's second term and legacy
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this final film on Yeltsin, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), discusses Yeltin’s second term and how his public profile went from hero to growing embarrassment. Importantly he examines how Yeltin’s search for a successor that would secure his family’s security led to rapid changes in Prime Ministers in...
Film: Yeltsin's second term and legacy
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Film: Yeltsin and the Oligarchs
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
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Film: Yeltsin and the Oligarchs
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Film: Yeltsin's agenda
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), discusses the emergence of Russia as a democratic country and its nascent capitalist economy. He outlines how the issues Yeltsin faced in government such as the 1993 constitutional crisis, followed by the shelling by tanks in Moscow led to Yeltsin rewriting...
Film: Yeltsin's agenda
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Film: Yeltsin and the fall of the Soviet Union
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), explores the role Yeltsin played in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Dr Bacon takes us from the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of nationalism in the new republics, and how Yeltsin became Russia’s first elected head of state....
Film: Yeltsin and the fall of the Soviet Union
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Film: Yeltsin and Russia in the late 1980s
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), examines the political and economic repercussions of Gorbachev’s reforms. Dr Bacon reflects upon the dire state of the Soviet economy in the late 1980s/early 1990s and how that led to change but also unrest. In particular he addresses the way that...
Film: Yeltsin and Russia in the late 1980s
