-
George III & America
Article
George III has had no reason to complain of modern historians. He has been cleared of the 'taint' of madness (though I had never realised it was a taint) and instead suffered from porphyria, arsenic poisoning or both. Romney Sedgwick cleared him of the charge of being backward and Namier...
George III & America
-
The Friar's Bush
Article
Nothing on earth would have persuaded me to enter the place… it was the house of the dead. Paul Henry, artist (1876-1958)
The Friar's Bush cemetery on the Stranmillis Road in Belfast may only be two acres in size, but its history is far bloodier and grislier than you would...
The Friar's Bush
-
Lloyd George & Gladstone
Article
Lloyd George, who died sixty years ago on 26 March 1945, grew up and began his Parliamentary career in Queen Victoria's reign. In taking up a major Welsh issue, disestablishment of the Church of Wales, he memorably clashed with William Ewart Gladstone, perhaps the greatest of all Liberal Prime Ministers....
Lloyd George & Gladstone
-
William Vernon Harcourt
Article
2004 marks the centenary of the death of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, on 30 September 1904, and this provides an opportunity to consider the extent to which Harcourt's beliefs and political attitudes are still relevant today. Although he is now almost forgotten Harcourt was regarded as a major figure in...
William Vernon Harcourt
-
Brazil and the two World Wars
Article
Brazil and the outbreak of the First World War At the beginning of the twentieth century Brazil was on the periphery of a world order that revolved around decisions made by the great European powers. Although it was the largest and most populated nation in South America, Brazil possessed an...
Brazil and the two World Wars
-
The Willing Suspension of Disbeliefs
Article
There should be no hesitancy doubting his existence R. G. Collingwood is remembered today as a philosopher, a man with a wide range of interests, the core of whose work is in the Idealist tradition. He died in 1943 and although his work has subsequently not been widely celebrated the...
The Willing Suspension of Disbeliefs
-
The commercial architecture of Victorian Liverpool
Article
In 1857 the Builder enthusiastically described the thriving state of architecture on the banks of the Mersey: 'The impression from a walk through the principal quarters of the town, after visiting other towns, is that more [building of a superior kind] must be doing in Liverpool than at any other...
The commercial architecture of Victorian Liverpool
-
'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
-
Personality & Power: The individual's role in the history of twentieth-century Europe
Article
What role do individuals wielding great power play in determining significant historical change? And how do historians locate human agency in historical change, and explain it? These are the issues I would like to reflect a little upon here. They are not new problems. But they are inescapable ones for...
Personality & Power: The individual's role in the history of twentieth-century Europe
-
Nineteenth Century African chiefs in Nuneaton: A local mystery uncovered
Article
In Nuneaton’s St. Nicolas Churchyard lies a sizeable, though not elaborate, flat gravestone. It commemorates Canon Robert Savage, Vicar of the parish 1845-71, his wife Emma and many of their children. This tombstone, like so many in our graveyards, reveals a wide range of historical information, recording significant detail about...
Nineteenth Century African chiefs in Nuneaton: A local mystery uncovered
-
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
-
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
-
The Spanish Collection
Article
For the art historian, a thorough study of works of art, their creators and the environment in which they were produced, as well as their significance then and now, is a specialised endeavour. This, nevertheless, does not exhaust the presentation of art to contemporaries, least of all in the context...
The Spanish Collection
-
Pressure and Persuasion Canadian agents and Scottish emigration, c. 1870- c. 1930
Article
In February, 1907, the Canadian government’s most northerly regional emigration office in the British Isles opened for business in Aberdeen. Located near the city centre, only a stone’s throw from the docks and the railway station, it soon fulfilled the expectation that it would capture the attention of a large...
Pressure and Persuasion Canadian agents and Scottish emigration, c. 1870- c. 1930
-
The British Union of Fascists: the international dimension
Article
Fascism failed in Britain in the 1930s – Europe’s decade of the ‘Brown plague’. Unlike in many European countries, fascists in Britain were never a serious threat to the democratic order. This was not for want of trying, especially on the part of Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union...
The British Union of Fascists: the international dimension
-
Queen Victoria as a Politician
Article
Even had Queen Victoria not presided over the achievements of the age which bears her name, her career would still hold a fascination for the historian. She was, for one thing, the solitary woman in a male political world. She was possessed of a personality at once perceptive and simple,...
Queen Victoria as a Politician
-
Mr Adams' Free Grammar School
Article
Adams’ Grammar School, Newport, Shropshire, was founded during the Commonwealth in 1656 towards the end of the great impetus of founding such schools in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite many setbacks and threats to its existence it continues in the twenty first century as one of the 164 surviving...
Mr Adams' Free Grammar School
-
The Casket Letters
Article
In May 1568 Mary Queen of Scots was riding in fear for her life to the wilds of Galloway. She crossed the Solway confident that she would receive the help which her cousin Queen Elizabeth had promised her, but instead found herself a prisoner. In the subsequent months a series...
The Casket Letters
-
John Wesley at 300
Historian article
The tercentenary of John Wesley’s birth has been celebrated not just in his native country, but round the world – as widely, in fact, as the Methodism associated with him has spread. Over the years, in addition to innumerable biographies there have been many studies of particular aspects of his...
John Wesley at 300
-
John Knox and womankind: a reappraisal
Historian article
"To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to his revealed will and approved ordinance, and finally it is the subversion of good order, and all equity and justice." John...
John Knox and womankind: a reappraisal
-
Tony Blair, the Iraq War, and a sense of history
Historian article
Blair the war leader provided historians with countless opportunities to get their names in the newspapers, let alone voice their opinions across the airwaves. The usual suspects were lined up (Eric Hobsbawm and Ben Pimlott in the Guardian, Andrew Roberts and John Keegan in the Telegraph, Niall Ferguson in The...
Tony Blair, the Iraq War, and a sense of history
-
Chamberlain Day and the popular meaning of Tariff Reform
Historian article
Few Conservative institutions appealed to the Tory rank-and-file activist like the Tariff Reform League did in the opening two decades of the Twentieth Century. From its foundation in 1903, the League spearheaded Joseph Chamberlain’s crusade to grant tariffs on imported goods, acting as his grassroots organisation. This article attempts to...
Chamberlain Day and the popular meaning of Tariff Reform
-
Oscar Wilde: the myth of martydom
Historian article
Over a century after his death, interest in Oscar Wilde and his work is at flood tide, with unprecedented levels of publication and research about Wilde and his work. Wildean studies proliferate, much in languages other than English. Recent translations of Wilde’s work have included Romanian, Hebrew, Swedish and Catalan,...
Oscar Wilde: the myth of martydom
-
Religion and Science in the Eighteenth Century
Historian article
Much has been said about the clash between religion and science in Victorian times but there has been less research into the relationship between them in the eighteenth century. This article considers three Georgian clergymen who were also notable scientists – the Reverend William Stukeley, the pioneer of scientific field...
Religion and Science in the Eighteenth Century
-
William the Silent: the first tolerant Prince
Historian article
There will be many readers of The Historian whose knowledge of the 16th Century is wide and deep. This article is designed to fill in some of the corners to the map of that warravaged century, and to focus on a man, William of Nassau, who fought the battle of...
William the Silent: the first tolerant Prince
