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The ‘workless workers’ and the Waterbury watch
Historian article
Peter Hounsell looks at the role of the Waterbury Watch Company in both the Queen’s Jubilee and the attempt to record and alleviate unemployment in London in the 1880s.
In Britain generally, but for London in particular, 1887 was a year of great contrasts. On 27 June, Londoners lined the...
The ‘workless workers’ and the Waterbury watch
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A woman’s place is in the castle
Historian article
This article looks at the role of two fourteenth century Scottish noblewomen, on opposing sides in the strife between Bruce and Balliol, who were left to defend their properties during their husbands’ absences.
The Scottish Wars of Independence were fought over several decades of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as...
A woman’s place is in the castle
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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
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Recorded Webinar: Nineteenth-century crime and punishment
Article
This webinar with Dr Emma D Watkins explores the changing understanding of crime and responses to it in the nineteenth-century. It provides a brief overview on the general shift from punishment of the body, to banishment, all the way through to imprisonment.
With a particular emphasis on the use of...
Recorded Webinar: Nineteenth-century crime and punishment
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King James’s Book of Sports, 1617
Historian article
Forty years after his higher degree research into the history of sport, Trevor James explores the much wider context in which that research now stands.
Four hundred years ago, in 1617, James I made a decisive intervention into the simmering debate which had existed since the puritanical upsurge in Queen...
King James’s Book of Sports, 1617
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An English Absolutism?
Classic Pamphlet
The term 'Absolutism' was coined in France in the 1790s, but the concept which described it was familiar to many Englishmen in the late seventeenth century. They talked of 'absolute monarchy', 'tyranny', 'despotism' and above all 'arbitrary government'. Their use of such terns were pejorative: they described political regimes of...
An English Absolutism?
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Royal Women: Queen Anne, Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II
Royal Women
In June 2012 the Historical Association and Historic Royal Palaces joined forces to offer a fantastic CPD opportunity in line with the Queen's diamond jubilee. Two CPD events around the theme of Royal Women charted the private histories of queens of the past from within the walls of their palaces. What...
Royal Women: Queen Anne, Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II
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Film: The ladies-in-waiting who served the six wives of Henry VIII
Virtual Branch
Every queen had ladies-in-waiting. Her confidantes and chaperones, they are the forgotten agents of the Tudor court. Experts at survival, negotiating the competing demands of their families and their queen, the ladies-in-waiting of Henry VIII’s wives were far more than decorative ‘extras’: they were serious political players who changed the...
Film: The ladies-in-waiting who served the six wives of Henry VIII
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The English Captivity of James I, King of Scots
Article
This booklet tells the story of James the first, with the events leading up to his capture and detailing the eighteen years spent in it. Balfour-Melville puts into writing the colourful, if not tragic, life of the capture and mere 13 year reign James. Brought alive in words, a King...
The English Captivity of James I, King of Scots
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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
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What is interesting about the interwar period?
Article
The years between the Armistice of November 1918 and the German attack on Poland in September 1939 were undoubtedly a period of massive transformations. Public appetite to learn about specific aspects of this era remains strong. The making of communist rule in revolutionary Russia, the tribulations of Weimar Germany, the rise...
What is interesting about the interwar period?
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To what extent was the failure of denazification in Germany 1945-48 a result of the apathy of the allies?
Historian article
To blame the failure of the denazification process in postwar Germany entirely on a vague and generalised concept such as apathy is simplistic and does not stand up to serious scrutiny. Denazification was one of the most ambitious attempts ever at provoking an artificial revolution; it is reasonable to assume...
To what extent was the failure of denazification in Germany 1945-48 a result of the apathy of the allies?
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What difference has the opening (and closing) of archives after 1991 made to the historiography of the Cold War?
Twentieth-century history
Prior to the East European revolutions of 1989, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, commentators outside the region were largely reliant on printed material collected by specialist research libraries, informal rrangements with contacts ‘behind the iron curtain’, information that could be gleaned from visits to the region, and...
What difference has the opening (and closing) of archives after 1991 made to the historiography of the Cold War?
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The first trans-Atlantic hero? General James Wolfe and British North America
Article
Early on the morning of 8 June 1758, British frigates unleashed their broadsides upon French shore defences at Gabarus Bay, on the foggy and surf-lashed island of Cape Breton. Under cover of the warships' guns, a motley flotilla of craft headed towards the land. Propelled by straining Royal Navy oarsmen,...
The first trans-Atlantic hero? General James Wolfe and British North America
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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
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Film: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War
The Searchers
Historian Robert Sackville-West joined the HA Virtual Branch in November 2021 to talk about the topic of his book The Searchers: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War. By the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed...
Film: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War
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Ferninando Gorges and New England
Classic Pamphlet
Sir Ferdinando Gorges (July 1565 - May 24, 1647), by some considered the "Father of English Colonization in North America", was an early English colonial entrepreneur and founder of the Province of Maine in 1622, although Gorges himself never set foot in the New World.
Sir Ferdinando Gorges was born...
Ferninando Gorges and New England
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Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
Historian article
‘It is often said on the other side of the water that none of the exhibitions which we send to England are purely and distinctively American', exhorted Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in an unsolicited letter of September 1884 to ‘Colonel' William Frederick Cody (1846-1917). ‘If you will take the Wild...
Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
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Saxons, Normans and Victorians
Classic Pamphlet
When Queen Victoria died in 1901, the Annual Register remarked that the feeling of forlorn-ness which swept the country had no parallel since the death of King Alfred. The men of the new century were driven to seek a Saxon parallel. So too were men at the beginning of the...
Saxons, Normans and Victorians
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The Albigensian Crusade
Classic Pamphlet
At the time of the First Crusade southern France was strongly Catholic: the army led by Raymond IV of Toulouse was the largest single force to take part in the expedition and was recruited from all classes. Yet eighty years later the Count's grandson, Raymond V, sent this appeal form...
The Albigensian Crusade
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Radicalism and its Results, 1760-1837
Classic Pamphlet
Radicalism with a large "R", unlike Conservatism with a large "C" and Liberalism with a large "L", is not a historical term of even proximate precision. There was never a Radical Party with a national organization, local associations, or a treasury. But there were, and there are, "Radicals", generally qualified...
Radicalism and its Results, 1760-1837
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British Christians and European Integration
Historian article
Despite Britain’s longstanding membership of the European Union, the question of ‘Europe’ continues to loom large in the nation’s politics. Whilst the economic pros and cons of Britain ‘joining’ the euro might be understood by only a select few, that issue provides for the many an opportunity to debate Britain’s...
British Christians and European Integration
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Currency and the Economy in Tudor and early Stuart England
Classic Pamphlet
Before the development of paper money, which in England did not really occur until later in the seventeenth century, the circulating medium consisted of coins and tokens. The unit of account in which they were valued was the pound sterling; in which there were twenty shillings each of twelve pence,...
Currency and the Economy in Tudor and early Stuart England
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Podcast Series: Early Modern Ireland
Multipage Article
This series of podcasts featuring Professor Sean Connolly and Professor David Hayton of Queen's University Belfast looks at Irish History from 1500-1800. Topics covered include Tudor Ireland, the Eleven Years War, Restoration Ireland, the significance of the reigns of James II and William III and politics in Ireland during the...
Podcast Series: Early Modern Ireland
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Excluded by men? Joanna the Mad, patriarchy and a charge of insanity
Historian article
Glyn Redworth re-appraises the life of an unfortunate queen.
Joanna of Castile was a pretty child. She had an oval face and a long delicate nose. Her skin was felt to be attractively light in colour as was her hair. Fiercely intelligent, the basics of Latin came easily to her....
Excluded by men? Joanna the Mad, patriarchy and a charge of insanity
