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On the campaign trail: walking the Hundred Years War
Historian article
In the tradition of landscape historians, Peter Hoskins has explored some of the route marches taken by English armies during the Hundred Years War.
After the battle of Crécy in 1346 and the capture of Calais by Edward III in the following year the Hundred Years War settled into an...
On the campaign trail: walking the Hundred Years War
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The Reign of Edward VI: An Historiographical Survey
Article
The modern historiography of this critical and disturbed six year period begins with the work of W.K. Jordan. Jordan was already a well established authority on the history of English philanthropy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, when he turned his attention specifically to Edward VI in the mid-1960s.
The Reign of Edward VI: An Historiographical Survey
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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
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Taj ul-Alam Safiatuddin Syah: a trailblazing Islamic queen
Historian article
Khadija Tauseef introduces the first of four successive sultanahs of Aceh during the seventeenth century.
As the sun sets on the glorious reign of Queen Elizabeth II, we pause and look back at the many queens that have contributed greatly to our historical heritage. While female sovereigns in Islamic kingdoms were a...
Taj ul-Alam Safiatuddin Syah: a trailblazing Islamic queen
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My Favourite History Place: The Musée Carnavalet, Paris
Historian article
Until it was overtaken in the twentieth century by Berlin and Moscow, Paris was the political, cultural and revolutionary hub around which Europe revolved. When the revolutionary Parisian crowd trudged out to Versailles in 1789 to attack the chateau and bring the king and his family back to the capital, they...
My Favourite History Place: The Musée Carnavalet, Paris
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Film: Stalin - Early Life
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Joseph Stalin was born Joseph Besarionis dze Jughashvili in 1878 into a poor family in Gori, Georgia, part of the then Russian Empire. Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary while his own radicalism grew, before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction through...
Film: Stalin - Early Life
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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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The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
Classic Pamphlet
The defeat of the revolution of 1905 afforded the absolutist Tsarist monarchy an opportunity to reform the administration and to seek a new basis of support in place of the declining gentry class. Historians have been divided ever since over the constitutional system's chances of success. Had Tsardom advanced far...
The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
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Copernicus and the Reformation of Astronomy
Classic Pamphlet
During the past four centuries, the processes of nature have come to be viewed in a new light through the progressive acquisition of the systematized, verifiable knowledge that we call science. The associated advances in technology have profoundly affected the circumstances of our daily lives, and have revolutionised the mutual...
Copernicus and the Reformation of Astronomy
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Agincourt 1415-2015
Historian article
Agincourt has become one of a small number of iconic events in our collective memory. Anne Curry explores how succeeding generations have exploited its significance.
In his budget statement of 18 March 2015 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced £1m had been awarded to commemorate the 600th anniversary...
Agincourt 1415-2015
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Poetry of the Industrial Revolution in the West Midlands c.1730-1800
Historian article
There is a view that the poetry of the eighteenth century began with moralising neo-classical satire, that this was followed by insipid pastoral, and that the century closed with the advent of the Romantic. This view is simplistic. While at particular times particular types of poetry might have predominated (and...
Poetry of the Industrial Revolution in the West Midlands c.1730-1800
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The Chapel and the Nation
Classic Pamphlet
The Noncoformitst chapel has played a crucial role in the history of the English and Welsh nations. When the great French historian Elie Halevy sought to explain the contrast between the turbulent history of his own country and the peaceful evolution of England in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries...
The Chapel and the Nation
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The British soldier in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars
Historian article
Scum of the earth – or fine fellows?
Carole Divall asks whether the men of the British Army really were ‘the scum of the earth’, as often asserted, or willing soldiers who earned the respect of the French.
‘Soldiers were regarded as day labourers engaged in unsavoury business; a money...
The British soldier in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars
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Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Classic Pamphlet
Irene Collins explores the origins of Liberalism within a turbulent nineteenth century Europe. From the beginnings of its use for Spanish rebels in 1820 and the insult it became when used by French royalists, to the growth of political Liberalism in Marxism and Russia in the turn of the century....
Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe
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Newcastle and the General Strike 1926
Historian article
The nine-day General Strike of May 1926 retains a totemic place in the nation's history nearly 100 years later. The Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill was among those who attempted to characterise it as anarchy and revolution, but this was hyperbole and largely inaccurate for, as Ellen Wilkinson (then...
Newcastle and the General Strike 1926
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Bolingbroke
Classic Pamphlet
There were three Bolingbrokes: (1) The politician and minister of Queen Anne's reign, whose career ended with his flight to France in April 1715; (2) The exile, after his brief service under "The Old Pretender," who was permitted in 1723 to return to England, but not to his seat in...
Bolingbroke
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Franz Ferdinand
Historian article
The Kapuzinerkirche (Church of the Capuchins) in Vienna's Neue Markt is one of the more curious attractions of the city, housing as it does the Kaisergruft crypt in which the Habsburgs are entombed, or rather in which their bodies are entombed: the hearts are usually kept in the Loreto Chapel...
Franz Ferdinand
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Joan Vaux: a remarkable Tudor lady
Historian article
Joanna Hickson is a hugely successful novelist, specialising in historical fiction, and she describes herself as feeling that she actually lives in the fifteenth century. For readers of The Historian she explores and explains how she developed her understanding and knowledge of a highly significant Tudor woman who is a central figure in two of...
Joan Vaux: a remarkable Tudor lady
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Catherine de' Medici and the French Wars of Religion
Article
R. J. Knecht suggests that the 'Black Legend' may not be quite as unfair to Catherine as her defenders have argued. Few historical figures have aroused as much passionate controversy as Catherine de’ Medici who was queen of France from 1547 until 1559 and several times regent before her death...
Catherine de' Medici and the French Wars of Religion
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Immigration and the making of British food
Historian article
Panikos Panayi explores the way in which immigration has transformed British eating habits over the last two centuries, whether through the rise of the restaurant and the development of eating out, or the culinary revolution at home.
Those people who voted to leave the European Union in 2016 because of...
Immigration and the making of British food
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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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The Coronation of King Charles III
Historian feature
2023 will see the first coronation of a British monarch for 70 years. Only those now in their 70s or above will remember the last one. The UK is the only country in Europe still to carry out a coronation, a ceremony that has its roots in traditions over a...
The Coronation of King Charles III
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Limited Monarchy in Great Britain in the Eighteenth Century
Classic Pamphlet
There was hardly anything in Great Britain which political thinkers on the continent of Europe in the eighteenth century admired more than its limited monarchy. But what were the limitations? Were they deliberate or not? Were they effected by acts of parliament or by the silent encroachments of usage? Did...
Limited Monarchy in Great Britain in the Eighteenth Century
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Papal Election and Murder
Historian article
Before the smoke clears: The longest papal election in history was marred by a brutal murder
Papal elections never used to be so short or easy. In 1268 Pope Clement IV died and the cardinals, divided between French and Italian factions, would be deadlocked for the next three years over...
Papal Election and Murder
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The death of a hero: Vice-Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson
Historian article
Michael Crumplin comments on the injuries and illnesses that Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson suffered during his shortened career. His bold leadership style, much admired by his naval companions, inevitably led to a series of wounds. Using a combination of contemporary accounts and current clinical, anatomical and physiological interpretation, this article...
The death of a hero: Vice-Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson
