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President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
Historian article
Introduction
Shortly after noon on 20 January 2009 Barack Obama began his historic Inaugural Address as 44th President of the United States of America. On the west porch of the Capitol, home to the US Congress, and under propitiously blue skies, the first African American president spoke before more than...
President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
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Women and the French Revolution: the start of the modern feminist movement
Historian article
Luke Rimmo Loyi Lego explores the role of women in the French Revolution, and how their challenges to traditional gender roles laid the foundations for the modern feminist movement.
The study of the French Revolution is often restricted to its impact on the Enlightenment ideas of influential men such as Rousseau,...
Women and the French Revolution: the start of the modern feminist movement
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1914: The Coming of the First World War
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet argues that the outbreak of the First World War represented not so much the culmination of a long process started by Bismarck and his successors, as the relatively sudden breakdown of a system that had in fact preserved the peace and contained the dangerous Eastern Question for over...
1914: The Coming of the First World War
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Polychronicon 139: Civic denouncer: The lives of Pavlik Morozov
Teaching History feature
Germaine Greer (in the context of the Pirelli Calendar) once commented that the defining feature of a legend was that almost nothing said and believed about it was true. Pavlik Morozov, notorious both inside Russia and internationally for having denounced his father, almost certainly never did so. In September 1932, local...
Polychronicon 139: Civic denouncer: The lives of Pavlik Morozov
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The Evolution of the British Electoral System 1832-1987
Classic Pamphlet
During the last 20 years our perspective on the great Victorian question of parliamentary reform has noticeably changed. We have acquired a comprehensive picture of the organisation and political socialisation of those who won the vote; and some interesting debates have developed about the social characteristics of the electors and...
The Evolution of the British Electoral System 1832-1987
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England Arise! The General Election of 1945
Historian article
‘The past week will live in history for two things’, announced the Sunday Times of 29 July 1945, ‘first the return of a Labour majority to Parliament and the end of Churchill's great war Premiership.’ Most other newspapers concurred. The Daily Mirror, of 27 July, proclaimed that the 1945 general election...
England Arise! The General Election of 1945
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Napoleon: First Consul and Emperor of the French
Classic Pamphlet
Four years after the battle of Waterloo, Richard Whately publicised a philosophical essay in which he argued that there was no real proof of Napoleon's existence. The deeds attributed to him were either so wondrously good or so amazingly bad that they far outran the evidence available to support them:...
Napoleon: First Consul and Emperor of the French
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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
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The origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Historian article
On 29 January 1949 there was a debate in the British House of Commons. When Winston Churchill, the leader of the opposition, interrupted Ernest Bevin’s history of the Palestine problem he was told by the Foreign Secretary: ‘over half a million Arabs have been turned by the Jewish immigrants into...
The origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
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My grandfather's recollections of the invasion of Normandy
Historian article
16-year-old Daisy Black of Newcastle-under-Lyme School in Staffordshire was the Senior Award winner in the Spirit of Normandy Trust Young Historian competition in 2007. Having been judged the winner by the Young Historian panel, the Spirit of Normandy Trsutees were so taken with her entry that they gave her an...
My grandfather's recollections of the invasion of Normandy
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Battle of the Somme: the making of the 1916 propaganda film
Historian article
The versions of history on our cinema screens have an important influence upon public perceptions of the past. In his article Taylor Downing explores how the wartime British government used the cinema for propaganda purposes and how the film Battle of the Somme contributes to portrayals of that battle to this...
Battle of the Somme: the making of the 1916 propaganda film
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The Origins of the Local Government Service
Historian article
The concept ‘local government’ dates only from the middle of the nineteenth century. ‘Local government service’ emerged later still. In 1903 Redlich and Hirst1 wrote of ‘municipal officers’, while in 1922 Robson2 preferred ‘the municipal civil service’. ‘Local government service’ perhaps derives its pedigree from its use in the final...
The Origins of the Local Government Service
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A Social History of the Welsh Language
Historian article
When the historian Peter Burke wrote in 1987 ‘It is high time for a social history of language’, he could scarcely have imagined that the first to meet the challenge would be the Welsh. In November 2000 the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, a research...
A Social History of the Welsh Language
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A Victorian deserter's family story: surviving a clash of loyalties
Historian article
More people than ever are seeking to trace their family histories. People can now sit at home and tap out in seconds from the internet many of their family's previously unknown genealogical details. But what if a century or more ago one of your family had tried to cover his...
A Victorian deserter's family story: surviving a clash of loyalties
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Britain and the Formation of NATO
Article
Carl Watts outlines the shift in British security policy and examines the role played by the Foreign Office during the post-War period. April 1999 marks the 50th anniversary of the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty, which came into effect in August 1949. The Cold War is over, but NATO...
Britain and the Formation of NATO
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The Resistable Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
Article
Malcolm Crook examines the remarkable ascent to power of Napoleon at the turn of the nineteenth century. The great Bicentenary of the French Revolution of 1789 may be drawing to a close, but that of Napoleon is about to commence. So now is an opportune moment to present a critical...
The Resistable Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
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After the Uprising of 1956: Hungarian Students in Britain
Historian article
Much has been written during the last 50 years about the events leading up to and during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Less consideration has been given to the students who arrived in Britain as refugees. During the weeks following the Soviet intervention in Hungary around 25,000 people were killed...
After the Uprising of 1956: Hungarian Students in Britain
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Iconic Images of War: photographs that changed history
Historian article
The recent photographs taken of US troops apparently abusing Iraqi prisoners-of-war in Abu Ghraib Jail have attracted attention across the world. Although it is too early to say whether these images will come to represent the essential character of the current Iraq conflict, they have altered public perceptions, producing doubt...
Iconic Images of War: photographs that changed history
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Have gun, will travel: The myth of the frontier in the Hollywood Western
Historian article
The Western movies that from around 1910 until the 1960s made up at least a fifth of all the American film titles on general release signified escapist entertainment for British audiences: an alluring vision of vast open spaces, of cowboys on horseback outlined against an imposing landscape.
For Americans themselves,...
Have gun, will travel: The myth of the frontier in the Hollywood Western
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The Right Kind of History. An Interview with Nicola Sheldon, Jenny Keating and John Hamer
Interview
Sir David Cannadine has written the book that tells the history of history in schools. On the podcast on this site he outlines some of his reasons for wanting to write the book and what his findings were. But alongside his name on the front cover are his research team...
The Right Kind of History. An Interview with Nicola Sheldon, Jenny Keating and John Hamer
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David Cannadine Interview about his book: The Right Kind of History
Cannadine Interview
Sir David Cannadine has done the unthinkable he has traced the teaching of history in state schools since the beginning. In his book The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth-Century England he explores the real history of history education the truth is discovered to that age old...
David Cannadine Interview about his book: The Right Kind of History
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The 'Era of the Dictators' Reconsidered
Article
Kenneth Thomson reflects on major aspects of the ‘era of the dictators’ after the collapse of Soviet Communism and its satellite regimes. In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, almost the whole of continental Europe was ruled by dictatorships of various political hues. Even countries, like France,...
The 'Era of the Dictators' Reconsidered
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The price of reform: the people's budget and the present trauma
Historian article
When Lloyd George succeeded Asquith as Chancellor of the Exchequer in April 1908, his first task was to introduce the old age pensions Asquith had initiated. His second was to prove even more momentous. On 29 April 1909 he presented what has become known as "The People's Budget".
The task...
The price of reform: the people's budget and the present trauma
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Hammer, House of Horror: The making of a British film company, 1934 to 1979
Historian article
The now legendary film company Hammer made such classics as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), plus their numerous sequels and subsequent remakes of old Universal Gothic chillers (The Curse of the Werewolf, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera), as well as making international stars out of Peter...
Hammer, House of Horror: The making of a British film company, 1934 to 1979
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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
