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William the First and the Sussex Rapes
Classic Pamphlet
During his reign, and in particular in the five years after the battle of Hastings, William I carried out the most thorough reallocation of land in England ever to take place in so short a period of time; the results were summarized in Domesday Book in 1086.That great record shows...
William the First and the Sussex Rapes
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Charles Gilpin
Historian article
Family Background and Early Life
Charles Gilpin was born in Bristol in 1815, the son of James Gilpin, a Quaker draper, and Mary Gilpin nee Sturge. The Sturges were a notable Quaker Liberal family, active in the campaign against slavery. Their relatives included the Darbys of Coalbrookdale. Charles Gilpin was...
Charles Gilpin
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Film: Lenin's legacy
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
With his body was embalmed and building high statues were erected to him Lenin’s memory seemed secured for ever. Yet how did his memory and his actual legacy differ? Did he really set the course for a future better Russia, or were his ideas of revolution better on paper than...
Film: Lenin's legacy
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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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Tudor Enclosures
Classic Pamphlet
Tudor enclosures hold the attention of historians because of the fundamental changes which they wrought in our system of farming, and in the appearance of the English countryside. At the same time, the subject is continually being re-investigated, and as a result it is no longer presented in the simple...
Tudor Enclosures
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Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
Classic Pamphlets
New Deal is the name given to the policies of the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s. Elected in 1932, at a time of great economic depression, he sought to alleviate distress by using the inherent powers of government, and the New Deal era come to be seen...
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
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The Industrial Revolution in England
Classic Pamphlet
Revolutions of the magnitude of the industrial revolution in England provoke historical controversy: such a revolution is a major discontinuity which a profession more skilled in explaining small changes finds difficult to understand. A revolution that touches a whole society is so diffuse that its significant events are difficult to...
The Industrial Revolution in England
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The National Memorial to William Ewart Gladstone
Historian article
To stand amidst the books in St Deiniol's Library is an intimidating experience for it is an encounter with the restless, brooding intelligence that was William Ewart Gladstone.
Lord Runcie of Cuddesdon, Archbishop of Canterbury (18 May 1998)
The ‘Temple of Peace'
St Deiniol's Library was founded in 1894 by...
The National Memorial to William Ewart Gladstone
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Why White Liberals Fail: United States politics in an election year
Historian feature
Paula Kitching interview with Professor Anthony J. Badger about his latest book.
2024 is an election year in the United States. For many in the UK and around the world the US political system can be confusing, with simple processes seemingly more complex than you would expect. It is not just the system...
Why White Liberals Fail: United States politics in an election year
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Film: Gorbachev - Early life and influences
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Emeritus Professor Archie Brown of the University of Oxford discusses Mikhail Gorbachev's early life and the influence it had on his later life and thinking. Mikhail Gorbachev was born to a poor peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage in 1931. Badly affected by both the famine of 1930-33 and...
Film: Gorbachev - Early life and influences
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'Right well kept': Peterborough Abbey 1536-1539
Historian article
Although the reasons for and the process of dissolution in Peterborough Abbey compare closely to all other religious houses, the consequences were unique. Peterborough received favourable treatment and so emerged from the dissolution as one of six abbeys to be transformed into new cathedrals. The changes imposed on Peterborough were...
'Right well kept': Peterborough Abbey 1536-1539
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Jacobitism
Classic Pamphlet
In recent years, the debate over the nature, extent, and influence of the Jacobite movement during the 70 years following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 has become one of the new growth industries among professional historians, spawning scholarly quarrels almost as ferocious as those which characterised ‘the Cause' itself.The term...
Jacobitism
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Stanley Baldwin's reputation
Historian article
Falsification of history is normally associated with dictatorships rather than liberal democracies. Yet tendentious accounts of the recent past are part of the armoury of all types of political debate. Such manipulation usually has only a limited and short-term influence, because it is neutralised by different political parties offering contending...
Stanley Baldwin's reputation
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The Great Exhibition
Article
‘Of all the decades to be young in, a wise man would choose the 1850s’ concludes G.M. Young in his Portrait of An Age. His choice is understandable. Historians and contemporaries have long viewed the middle years of the century as a ‘plateau of peace and prosperity’, an ‘age of...
The Great Exhibition
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The Reformed Electoral System in Great Britain, 1832-1914
Classic Pamphlet
The struggle for parliamentary reform between 1830 and 1832 has long been regarded as one of the decisive battles of British political history. The Tories lamented that the passage of the Reform Bill meant the destruction of the constitution.
Middle class Radicals welcomed the Reform Bill as the instrument that...
The Reformed Electoral System in Great Britain, 1832-1914
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Doomed to fail: America’s intervention in Vietnam
Historian article
Why did American military involvement in Vietnam fail? In this article, David McGill explains why the United States never had a realistic chance of defeating the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies.
The decision by the United States government to become involved in supporting the South Vietnamese government against the...
Doomed to fail: America’s intervention in Vietnam
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Facing the Revolution: the other Americans
Historian article
The American Revolution presented all who lived through it with difficult choices about allegiance, identity, and self-interest. The responses of American loyalists, enslaved people, and Native Americans reveal much about the country’s revolutionary foundation and the United States of today.
The American Revolution was at once universal and narrowly nationalistic....
Facing the Revolution: the other Americans
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Muddy Waters: from migrant to music icon
Historian article
Matt Jux-Blayney explores the impact of the blues singer Muddy Waters against a backdrop of significant social and racial change in the United States of the mid-twentieth century.
On 3 July 1960, a man from Mississippi was introduced onto the stage of the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. He...
Muddy Waters: from migrant to music icon
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The First Crusade, 1095–99
Historian feature
As Christianity had spread across Europe, Islam had spread across the Middle East. At the end of the eleventh century the relationship between the Muslim leader of Jerusalem and the Christian communities and travellers to the city fractured. Along with other key relationships across Europe, the Middle East and around...
The First Crusade, 1095–99
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History Abridged: American Policy: theory and practice over 200 years
Historian feature
History Abridged: In this feature we take a person, time, theme or event and tell you the vast rich history in small space. A long dip into history in a shortened form. See all History Abridged articles
The ‘Monroe Doctrine’ in 1825 provided a cornerstone for future United States foreign policy. Drafted...
History Abridged: American Policy: theory and practice over 200 years
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Secular acts and sacred practices in the Italian Renaissance church interior
Historian article
Joanne Allen reveals a fundamental structural and architectural development in Italian churches in the Renaissance era, demonstrating that careful observation of structures and archives can substantially inform our appreciation of all church buildings.
In the opening to The Decameron (c. 1350), Boccaccio described how the ten young people who would become storytellers...
Secular acts and sacred practices in the Italian Renaissance church interior
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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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Elizabeth I: ‘less than a woman’?
Historian article
Tracy Borman examines the femininity of the Virgin Queen.
Elizabeth I is often hailed as a feminist icon. Despite being the younger, forgotten daughter of Henry VIII with little hope of ever inheriting the throne, she became his longest-reigning and most successful heir by a country mile. In an age when...
Elizabeth I: ‘less than a woman’?
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My Favourite History Place: Sawley Abbey
Historian feature
Steve Illingworth highlights the importance of a remote Lancashire ruin which might have changed the course of history.
Sawley Abbey in east Lancashire can appear to be an unassuming and insignificant place at first sight. Its main attraction appears to be aesthetic, with the Cistercian abbey being surrounded by fields and hills...
My Favourite History Place: Sawley Abbey
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History Abridged: London’s women statues
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
We live in a seemingly iconoclastic age. Statues that were once part of the established...
History Abridged: London’s women statues
