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Found 825 results matching 'brief history' within Publications > The Historian > Historian articles   (Clear filter)

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  • The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings

      Historian article
    How did King Harold II die at the Battle of Hastings? The question is simple enough and the answer is apparently well known. Harold was killed by an arrow which struck him in the eye. His death is depicted clearly on the Bayeux Tapestry in one of its most famous...
    The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings

  • Capone's lost lair: The Lexington Hotel, Chicago

      Historian article
    Alphonse Gabriel Capone's bequest to history is a well-known catalogue of brutal racketeering, bootlegging, gangland murders (most infamously the St Valentine's Day Massacre of 14 February 1929) and the corruption of both American public morals and her elected officials, including the US Judiciary, Chicago mayoralty and city police force. Born...
    Capone's lost lair: The Lexington Hotel, Chicago

  • Isaac Butt and Irish Nationality

      Article
    Alan O’Day reviews and reassesses the career of the major Irish Nationalist figure before Charles Stewart Parnell. Once the most respected man in Irish nationalist circles, Isaac Butt became merely a footnote in Anglo-Irish history after his death on 5 May 1879. Yet, from the mid-1860s until he died his...
    Isaac Butt and Irish Nationality

  • 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

  • Culture Shock: The Arrival of the Conquistadores in Aztec Mexico

      Historian article
    When the Spanish Conquistadores arrived in Mexico during the early sixteenth century there were many repercussions for the indigenous people. Their conversion to Christianity and the sacking of their temples are two of the most well known examples.  However, it is often forgotten that the Aztecs had only a pictorial...
    Culture Shock: The Arrival of the Conquistadores in Aztec Mexico

  • Verdun: the endless battle

      Historian article
    Most can agree that the battle of Verdun started 100 years ago, on 21 February 1916, when the Germans began attacking French positions north and east of the old fortress town on the Meuse river. Few can agree on when it ended. The Germans might draw a line under it...
    Verdun: the endless battle

  • From tragedy to triumph: The courage of Henrietta, Lady of Luxborough 1699-1756

      Historian article
    Why is Henrietta Luxborough, who was born in 1699, of interest today? In the first place because of whom she was; in the second because of what happened to her; and in the third because of her courage which enabled her to overcome adversity and lead a life utterly different...
    From tragedy to triumph: The courage of Henrietta, Lady of Luxborough 1699-1756

  • MOOCs and the Middle Ages

      Historian article
    Deirdre O’Sullivan explains how history courses such as England in the Time of Richard III are now freely available to people anywhere in the world who have online access. She reports that in the past two years 40,000 learners have followed this course. MOOCs (Massive Open Access Online Courses) are...
    MOOCs and the Middle Ages

  • Twickenham as a Patriotic Town

      Historian article
    Twickenham from the 1890s onwards grew as a town with a special sense of history. Nobody in authority on the local council could quite forget the reputation which the district had acquired as a rural arcadia. The aristocrats and gentry who built villas in the parish in the late 17th...
    Twickenham as a Patriotic Town

  • 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

  • Why did the Dome fail?

      Historian article
    History gives us a basis for understanding the groups which people belong to, the countries people live in and the institutions which govern them. It provides a sense of continuity and identity. However, on 31 December 1999 the Queen and Prime Minister opened an exhibition which made no reference to...
    Why did the Dome fail?

  • The Tower and The Victorians: Politics and Leisure

      Article
    At the beginning of the nineteenth century about 15,000 people visited the Tower of London each year to enjoy a spectacle which had taken shape over the previous century and a half. Patriotic tableaux, trophies of victory, vast arrays of arms and armour, the menagerie and the Crown Jewels were...
    The Tower and The Victorians: Politics and Leisure

  • War Plan Red: the American Plan for war with Britain

      Article
    John Major discusses an astonishing aspect of past Anglo-American history. All great powers have developed contingency plans for war with each other, and the United States in the early twentieth century was no exception. Each of Washington’s schemes was given a distinctive colour. Green mapped out intervention in neighbouring Mexico,...
    War Plan Red: the American Plan for war with Britain

  • Travelling the Seventeenth-Century English Economy: Rediscovery of Celia Fiennes

      Article
    Pam Sharpe reflects on the journals and expeditions of a 17th-century traveller. I first encountered Celia Fiennes (1662-1741), early modern traveller and journal writer, when I was an undergraduate. Being a keen traveller myself and studying social and economic history, Fiennes’ journeys fascinated me1. Here was a woman who travelled...
    Travelling the Seventeenth-Century English Economy: Rediscovery of Celia Fiennes

  • Benjamin Jesty: Grandfather of Vaccination

      Historian article
    Commonly hailed as a discovery or a ‘medical breakthrough', vaccination against smallpox with cowpox exudate was a development of variolation i.e. inoculation with live smallpox matter - a technique popularised amongst the gentry in the early eighteenth century by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who had observed the procedure in Turkey...
    Benjamin Jesty: Grandfather of Vaccination

  • Home Rule for Ireland - For and against

      Historian article
    At a time when the United Kingdom continues to review its internal constitutional arrangements, Matthew Kelly explores how this constitutional debate can be traced back to Gladstone's decision to promote Home Rule for Ireland and how these proposals evolved over time and were challenged. Irish political history decisively entered a...
    Home Rule for Ireland - For and against

  • How Nelson Became a Hero

      Article
    The fittest man in the world for the command' of the Mediterranean, Lord Minto declared of Horatio Nelson on 24 April 1798, following Nelson's inventive assault on Spanish ships off Cape St. Vincent. 'Admiral Nelson's victory [at the Nile]… is one of the most glorious and comprehensive victories ever achieved...
    How Nelson Became a Hero

  • The Last Duke of Lorraine

      Article
    The Place Stanislas in Nancy has a high reputation. But expectations are far surpassed as one surveys the beautifully proportioned square, with its imposing buildings such as the Hôtel de Ville and the Governor's Palace, its Arc de Triomphe and its magnificent iron work. It is a reminder of how...
    The Last Duke of Lorraine

  • Real Lives: Surviving the War in the Soviet Union: recollections of a child deportee

      Historian feature
    This 'Real Lives' piece is based on a series of interviews Annette Ormanczyk carried out in 2019 with Mrs Irena Persak, who was deported as a five-year-old child with her family in February 1940. As well as offering a fascinating personal account of life in the Soviet Union during the Second...
    Real Lives: Surviving the War in the Soviet Union: recollections of a child deportee

  • Smithfield's Bartholomew Fair

      Historian article
    On the north-western side of the City of London, directly in front of St Bartholomew's Hospital near the ancient church of St Bartholomew the Great, there once lay a ‘smooth field', now known as Smithfield. This open space of around ten acres had a long and turbulent history. In medieval...
    Smithfield's Bartholomew Fair

  • Real Lives: Harry Daley

      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: Harry Daley

  • The myths about the 1745 Jacobite revolution

      Historian article
    The harsh reality The 1745 Rebellion has become part of the romantic heritage in both British and Scottish history. At the time there was little romance to it. The many myths and misconceptions about Bonnie Prince Charlie and his followers need to be corrected and the glamorous image of the...
    The myths about the 1745 Jacobite revolution

  • Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King

      Historian article
    The National Portrait Gallery in London is home to many thousands of portraits, photographs and sculptures of the great and the good, as well as those who travelled on the darker side of history. In 2007 it hosted a small exhibition in the Porter Gallery entitled Between Worlds: Voyagers to...
    Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King

  • French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?

      Historian article
    The year 1066 - the one universally remembered date in English history, so well-known that banks advise customers not to choose it as their PIN number - opened the country up to French influence in spectacular fashion. During the ‘long twelfth century' (up to King John's death in 1216) that...
    French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?

  • What did you do in The Great War? A family mystery explored

      Historian article
    Research into family history is well-known as likely to dig up some uncomfortable evidence. Nearly every family has had its bastards; nearly every generation has had someone on poor relief. We had both. But more troubling was my recent suspicion that a hundred or so years ago not one but two...
    What did you do in The Great War? A family mystery explored