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Neville Chamberlain: Villain or Hero?
Historian article
Perhaps no other British figure of the twentieth century has been as vilified or as celebrated as Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. In 1999, a BBC Radio 4 poll of prominent historians, politicians and commentators rated Chamberlain as one of the worst Prime Ministers of...
Neville Chamberlain: Villain or Hero?
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The mechanical heroes of the Battle of Britain
Historian article
The Battle of Britain is often described as the point at which the Nazi threat began to diminish and cracks began to form in Hitler's regime. The air campaign launched by the Germans in the summer of 1940 intended to wipe out the existence of the British Royal Air Force...
The mechanical heroes of the Battle of Britain
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The Tale of Two Winstons
Historian article
Winston Churchill is generally regarded as one of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century. As Prime Minister he led Britain to victory against the Nazi war machine, leading Time to name him ‘Man of the Year' in 1940 and ‘Man of the Half Century' in 1949. As recently...
The Tale of Two Winstons
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An Intimate History of Your Home - Lucy Worsley
Historian Article
‘You've gone over to The Dark Side'.
These were the words of a well-respected historian to whom I'd been enthusing about the pleasures and perils of Dressing Up.
During 2009-10 I spent several months in historic costume, recreating the habits and rituals of domestic life in the past. It was...
An Intimate History of Your Home - Lucy Worsley
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Oxford's Literary War: Oxford University's servicemen and the Great War
Historian article
The last two decades have seen a slow shift in the academic understanding of the impact of the Great War on interwar Britain. The work of a small group of cultural historians has challenged strongly held pre-existing interpretations of the cultural impact of the Great War. However, there is still...
Oxford's Literary War: Oxford University's servicemen and the Great War
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Podcast Series: Religion in the UK
Multipage Article
In Part 5 of our series on Social and Political Change in the UK 1800-present we look at religion in the U.K. This set of podcasts features Dr Janice Holmes of the Open University, Revd Dr Jeremy Morris, Dean, Fellow, and Director of Studies in Theology at King's College, Andrew Copson,...
Podcast Series: Religion in the UK
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The British Government's Confidential Files on the United States
Historian article
Unpublished papers in Britain's National Archives at Kew reveal curious undercurrents in Anglo-American relations. After the conclusion of the Boer War, for example, the British Army supposed that the next major conflict would be not with Germany but with the U.S. A memo printed for circulation in July 1904 entitled ‘A...
The British Government's Confidential Files on the United States
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The British General Strike 1926
Classic Pamphlet
‘The General Strike is a challenge to Parliament and is the road to anarchy and ruin.' (Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister, 6th May 1926).
‘The General Council does not challenge the Constitution ... the sole aim of the Council is to secure for the miners a decent standard of life. The Council...
The British General Strike 1926
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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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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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Imperialism resurgent: European attempts to 'recolonise' South East Asia after 1945
Historian article
‘To think that the people of Indochina would be content to settle for less [from the French] than Indonesia has gained from the Dutch or India from the British is to underestimate the power of the forces that are sweeping Asia today'.
An American adviser in 1949 cited: Robin Jeffrey...
Imperialism resurgent: European attempts to 'recolonise' South East Asia after 1945
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Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar
Historian article
Whenever British radar is discussed the name that usually comes to mind is that of Robert Watson Watt. Our history books and our dictionaries of biography consistently attribute the discovery of radar in Britain solely to Watson Watt, with little or no mention of the key role played by his...
Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar
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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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The Advent of Decimalisation in Britain: 1971
Historian article
Decimal Day in Britain was Monday 15 February 1971. New coins and notes were circulated. There was no special issue postage stamp to commemorate the occasion, only a new series with some unfamiliar values, such as 7½p instead of 1s 6d. The fortieth anniversary of the arrival of decimal currency...
The Advent of Decimalisation in Britain: 1971
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Remembering Neville Chamberlain
Historian article
Brent Dyck is a Canadian teacher and a previous contributor to The Historian. In this short essay he offers us his objective interpretation of the achievements of Neville Chamberlain. For some what he says may seem surprising and for others it might even be controversial. However, editorially it seemed entirely proper...
Remembering Neville Chamberlain
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Podcast Series: The British Empire 1800-Present
Multipage Article
An HA Podcasted History of the British Empire 1800-Present featuring Dr Seán Lang of Anglia Ruskin University, Dr John Stuart of Kingston University London, Professor A. J. Stockwell and Dr Larry Butler of the University of East Anglia.
Podcast Series: The British Empire 1800-Present
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British Women in the Nineteenth Century
Classic Pamphlet
A short pamphlet surveying the historical record of rather more than half the population of Britain over a period of a hundred years must of necessity be sketchy and incomplete. The great interest in history of women which has arisen in the last few decades has produced a great deal...
British Women in the Nineteenth Century
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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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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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Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890
Historian article
One hundred and twenty years ago the advent of the first red May Days caused major concern across Europe. To general surprise, in 1890 and the next few years some of the largest rallies occurred in London. In Britain the main demonstration on the nearest Sunday to May Day passed...
Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890
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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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World War 2 Letters
Link
Lt. Richard (Dick) Kelner Williams volunteered for the Dorset Regiment in June 1940. He trained in Wiltshire with the 6th and 70th Dorsets in 1940 and 41. After a period in the Intelligence Section of the Dorsets he volunteered for the 1st Air Landing Squadron and the 43rd Reconnaissance Regiment before his commission...
World War 2 Letters
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Irish Unionism 1885-1922
Classic Pamphlet
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of Irish unionism for British and Irish politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The movement was supported almost exclusively by Irish Protestants who were of Anglo-Irish or Scotch-Irish descent and who comprised roughly one-quarter of the population of Ireland. Its...
Irish Unionism 1885-1922
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Edwardian England
Classic Pamphlet
The Edwardian era is still less than a lifetime away. Yet the memoirs of surviving Edwardians, written any time between the nineteen-twenties and the nineteen sixties, have often made it sound like a remote epoch. The years between the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the outbreak of the...
Edwardian England
