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Filmed Interviews: The Women of Bletchley Park
The Women of Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park was the most important of the top secret intelligence sites during the Second World War. The quiet Buckinghamshire village hosted 10,000 people dedicated to defeating the Nazis, 75% of those were women.
In this podcast we are lucky enough to have some of those women talking about their...
Filmed Interviews: The Women of Bletchley Park
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Evidence: Theoretical
Links to HA resources for secondary teachers
Getting Year 10 beyond trivial judgements of ‘bias': towards victory in that battle ...
Let's play Supermarket ‘Evidential' Sweep: developing students' awareness of the need to select evidence
Assessment of students' uses of evidence: shifting the focus from processes to historical reasoning
How can students' use of historical evidence be...
Evidence: Theoretical
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The War of American Independence
Classic Pamphlet
In the two-hundredth year of American Independence, it is proper to ask: why did it occur? It need not have happened; it was the act of men, not immutable forces. But once the tensions became acute, the three thousand miles of ocean were a difficult chasm to bridge. The War...
The War of American Independence
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The Normans
Links to Articles & Podcasts
Norman Conquest
The Origins of the Norman Conquest
The Norman Conquest: why did it matter? KeynoteSpeech from the Historical Association 2013 Annual Conference - Podcast
1066: The Limits of our Knowledge
Edward the Confessor and the Norman Conquest
The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of...
The Normans
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The Lords of Renaissance Italy
Classic Pamphlet
The Lords of Renaissance Italy: the signori, 1250-1500 Among the many city states into which Italy was divided in the late medieval and early modern period, the republics of Florence and Venice are comparatively well known. Republicanism was not, however, the most common form of government. This pamphlet deals with states...
The Lords of Renaissance Italy
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Thinking of teaching?
Multipage Article
Routes into teaching
Although there are now hundreds of training providers and different courses from which to choose, an awareness of some basic distinctions can help enormously in deciding what type of programme you want to follow, and clarifying your options. One essential distinction is between fee-paying programmes, on which...
Thinking of teaching?
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The importance of history
Article
The importance of history: Powerpoint presentation from the Regional Subject CfBT/HA ConferencesStarting point. Creating a departmental vision.The construction of any curriculum begins with questions about the purpose and philosophy of the curriculum. The new orders for history offer departments a ready made statement of history's importance and purpose.
The importance of history
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Podcast Series: The History of Science
Multipage Article
In this series of podcasts we take a look at the history of the Royal Society and the influence it has had on the history and development of science.
This series features: Keith Moore, Head of Libraries and Archives at the Royal Society, Dr Jordan Goodman, Dr Patricia Fara of...
Podcast Series: The History of Science
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Making sense of the eighteenth century
Teaching History article
Making sense of the eighteenth century
Pressures on curriculum time force us all to make difficult choices about curriculum content, but the eighteenth century seems to have suffered particular neglect. Inspired by the tercentenary of the accession of the first Georgian king and the interest in the Acts of Union prompted...
Making sense of the eighteenth century
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The Origins of the First World War
Classic Pamphlet
The First World War broke out suddenly and unexpectedly in midsummer 1914, following the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Hapsburg, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, at Sarajevo, in Bosnia, on 28 June. Since no war involving the European great powers had occurred since 1871, the possibility of...
The Origins of the First World War
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Polychronicon 152: Changing interpretations of the workhouse?
Teaching History feature
The workhouse has long held a negative reputation in the popular imagination as the dreaded destination of the destitute, an institution guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of the Victorian poor. This is partly owing to its design under the New Poor Law of 1834 as an explicit punishment...
Polychronicon 152: Changing interpretations of the workhouse?
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Writing the history of nineteenth-century Europe
Annual Conference 2013 Podcast
Keynote Speech from the Historical Association 2013 Annual Conference - Podcast
Sir Richard Evans FBA - Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge
‘Study problems, not periods', Lord Acton famously advised in his Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge. Centuries in themselves have no historical meaning; the...
Writing the history of nineteenth-century Europe
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Disembarking the religious rollercoaster
Teaching History article
Sarah Jackson-Buckley and Jessie Phillips found themselves perennially dissatisfied with the outcomes of their teaching of the Protestant Reformation. Determined that students should take away a sense of the momentous political and social consequences of the Reformation, they turned to historical scholarship, and to the work of other history teachers on...
Disembarking the religious rollercoaster
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Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
Article
Oliver Cromwell’s death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivalled turmoil and confusion in English history. In less than two years, there were close to ten changes of government; rival armies of Englishmen faced each other across the Scottish border; and the Long Parliament was finally dissolved after two decades.
Why...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
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Film: Making the most of HA trainee membership
Article
Film: Making the most of HA trainee membership
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Virtual Branch Recording: The cultural world of Elizabethan England
Article
In this Virtual Branch talk Professor Emma Smith provides a preview of her current research, which explores the lives and cultural undercurrents of Elizabethan England. What was influencing their cultural tastes and how much of it was new, or had it all been seen before?
Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare...
Virtual Branch Recording: The cultural world of Elizabethan England
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Tracing the popular memory of Rosa Parks with Year 9
Teaching History article
Inspired by Jeanne Theoharis’s biography of Rosa Parks, Ed Durbin initially planned to challenge the ‘fable’ that had been constructed around her life. He soon realised, however, that he wanted to take the opportunity to get ‘behind’ the fable and help his students understand how and why it had been constructed. Drawing...
Tracing the popular memory of Rosa Parks with Year 9
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The Origins of the Second Great War
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet provides a detailed account of the events leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939, covering the various factors that played a role in the outbreak of war such as tension over Poland and the Spanish Civil War, as well as the nature and effect of diplomatic...
The Origins of the Second Great War
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Virtual Branch Recording: The Women of the Anarchy
Article
In 1135 Stephen of Blois usurped the throne, stealing it from his cousin Empress Matilda and sparking a nineteen-year civil war that would become known as the Anarchy, one of the bloodiest periods in English history. On the one side is Empress Matilda. On the other side is her cousin,...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Women of the Anarchy
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Polychronicon 148: The Wars of the Roses
Teaching History feature
There are few periods in our history from which we turn with such weariness and disgust as from the Wars of the Roses. Their savage battles, their ruthless executions, their shameless treasons seem all the more terrible from the pure selfishness of the ends for which men fought, the utter...
Polychronicon 148: The Wars of the Roses
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The Battle of Monte Cassino and the D-Day Landings
Article
The Second World War is no longer a recent war. Very soon, there will be no veterans left to tell us how they saw things and what it was really like for them. While some eyewitnesses who were children at the time might be with us to see the centenary...
The Battle of Monte Cassino and the D-Day Landings
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GCSE Podcasts: The League of Nations
Multipage Article
Aaron Wilkes and Katrina Shearman of Castle High School in Dudley discuss one of the key topics for modern world history students: The League of Nations.
We have produced three podcasts with the first looking at the Origins, Structure and Limitations of the League of Nations, the second podcast examining the League of...
GCSE Podcasts: The League of Nations
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Maximising the power of storytelling in the history classroom
Teaching History article
James Hopkins’s Year 10 class had been excited by their course on medicine through time, but were less enthused about their new study of Norman England. They told him that the topic felt ‘distant’ and ‘not real’. Recalling his own experience as a student, Hopkins was interested in the ways...
Maximising the power of storytelling in the history classroom
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Muslim Rescuers of the Holocaust CPD
CPD Unit
This CPD unit focuses on the experience of Muslim rescuers during the Holocaust and the Second World War. It was written by Andrew Wrenn, Cambridgeshire Humanities Advisor, to complement another unit published earlier on this website called Muslim Tommies which dealt with the experience of Muslim soldiers fighting for Britain...
Muslim Rescuers of the Holocaust CPD
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Teacher Fellowship programme: The Caribbean, Monarchy and Legacies of Empire
Teacher Fellowship programme 2025
Although twelve Caribbean colonies gained independence during Elizabeth II's reign, only four opted to become republics (most recently Barbados, in 2021) and eight retain the British monarch as head of state to this day. Emphasising Caribbean sources and perspectives, this Teacher Fellowship programme examines the role of the British monarchy in the...
Teacher Fellowship programme: The Caribbean, Monarchy and Legacies of Empire
