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Joseph Priestley's American Dream
Historian article
Joseph Priestley ended his days in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. This is one of the most delightful spots in the eastern United States. It is situated at the confluence of the North Western and North Eastern branches of the Susquehanna, one of the great rivers of North America, which winds its way...
Joseph Priestley's American Dream
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Cartoons and the historian
Historian article
Many historical books contain cartoons, but in most cases these are little more than a relief from the text, and do not make any point of substance which is not made elsewhere. Political cartoons should be regarded as much more than that. They are an important historical source which often...
Cartoons and the historian
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Out and about looking at Crinkle Crankle Walls
Historian feature
At the village of Easton in Suffolk one of its most distinctive features is its crinkle crankle wall. It is said to be the longest example of this form of wall construction and design. When Easton Hall, the seat of the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton was demolished and transported...
Out and about looking at Crinkle Crankle Walls
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Memorial Oaks at Wolsingham School
Historian article
Our World War I commemorative series continues with Robert Hopkinson's introduction to what the Imperial War Museum believes is the oldest war memorial in Britain.
Wolsingham School and Community College, in Weardale, County Durham, celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2014. As part of the celebrations, there was an exhibition, a...
Memorial Oaks at Wolsingham School
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The Duke whose life began and ended in a barn
Article
Though ill-luck came the way of the Harvey family last autumn when their hay barn was gutted by fire, they hardly expected it to become national news. The family run a dairy farm in the Jock River country south of what is now Ottawa in Canada – nothing extraordinary about...
The Duke whose life began and ended in a barn
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Spencer Perceval: private values and public virtues
Historian article
The public man and his career Spencer Perceval's career as a public figure lasted from 1796 when he became a King's Counsel and MP for Northampton until his murder sixteen years later at the age of 49. He was shot in the lobby of the House of Commons at 5.15pm...
Spencer Perceval: private values and public virtues
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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
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Hat on headstones
Historian article
The grave markers in churchyards and cemeteries are for the most part depressingly unimaginative both in their design and in their inscriptions but one occasionally meets with an attempt at striking an individual note, such as a sculpted depiction of a motor vehicle, or an animal, or the head-gear worn...
Hat on headstones
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The Unfortunate Captain Peirce
Historian article
An apprentice biographer researches the career of an eighteenth-century sea captain
On a cold January afternoon in 1986, my neighbour announced that he intended to go to Dorset's Purbeck coast that night. Puzzled, I asked why. He explained it was the 200th anniversary of the wreck of the East Indiaman,...
The Unfortunate Captain Peirce
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My Favourite Place - Beamish
Historian feature
Hopping off a tram at Beamish Museum, you're stepping straight into life in Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian times. What I really love about Beamish, the Living Museum of the North, is that it not only shows how communities in the region used to live - but also gives you a...
My Favourite Place - Beamish
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Franz Ferdinand
Historian article
The Kapuzinerkirche (Church of the Capuchins) in Vienna's Neue Markt is one of the more curious attractions of the city, housing as it does the Kaisergruft crypt in which the Habsburgs are entombed, or rather in which their bodies are entombed: the hearts are usually kept in the Loreto Chapel...
Franz Ferdinand
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Cooling Memories? Why We Still Remember Scott And Shackleton
Historian article
Just along from the grand lobby of the new British Library, on the left up a broad staircase, there is a half concealed doorway. Walk through the doors and you enter a low gallery, dimly lit and filled with expansive display cases. There is always a hush in this room...
Cooling Memories? Why We Still Remember Scott And Shackleton
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From Ashes to Icon
Historian article
Charles Stirton reflects on Middleton Hall and the creation of the National Botanic garden of Wales. Something significant is stirring in the gardening world. This year Wales will make history by opening the first national botanic garden in the third millennium. When visitors enter the new garden on the 24th...
From Ashes to Icon
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It's Murder On The Orient Express
Historian article
It was the most luxurious long distance rail journey in the history of travel. Royalty, aristocracy, the rich and the famous travelled regularly on the Orient Express. Gourmet chefs prepared exquisite meals, chandeliers, luxury compartments, staterooms and dining rooms on a par with famous hotels like the Ritz were all...
It's Murder On The Orient Express
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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
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How can there be a true history?
Historian article
"How can there be a true history, when we see no man living is able to write truly the history of the last week?" (Thomas Shadwell)
Indeed! Once when I had to give a talk in Spain, I found this quotation by looking up ‘history' in the Oxford English Dictionary....
How can there be a true history?
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1939 After Sixty Years
Article
Historians view major anniversaries with a measure of ambivalence. We know that they are artificial, that it is merely a convenient fiction to think that the passage of a round number of years provides a privileged vantage point from which to review the significance of a given event. Yet we...
1939 After Sixty Years
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Cambridge
Article
Elisabeth Leedham-Green reflects on reality in the famous university town of Cambridge. This is a sharp place, best encountered when, as surprisingly often, the sun is shining and there is frost in the air. Then the stone sparkles and seems to float a few inches above the gleaming grass —...
Cambridge
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The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
Article
Dr Jacqueline Beaumont Hughes considers some aspects of the role of the Press during the Boer War. The conflict between Great Britain and the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State which slipped into war in October 1899 was to become the most significant since the Crimean war. It...
The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
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Vichy France and the Jews
Article
Dr Julian Jackson examines the position and treatment of Jews in Occupied France. When in 1945 France came to try those who had ‘collaborated’ during the war, the fate of the Jews was not central. It was even possible for Xavier Vallat, Vichy’s Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, to defend himself...
Vichy France and the Jews
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Real Lives: Maharaja’s German: Anthony Pohlmann in India
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: Maharaja’s German: Anthony Pohlmann in India
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Why the OBE survived the Empire
Historian article
An anomaly of the British honours system is the name of the award most frequently given - the Order of the British Empire created in 1917. Each medal carries the words: ‘For God and the Empire'. When the connection between the person honoured and the church is often very tenuous...
Why the OBE survived the Empire
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Tudor queens: power, identity and gender
Historian article
Gregory Gifford investigates the cultural issues raised by the sixteenth century‘s reigning queens.
In 1877 when Sitting Bull led his Lakota people across the border into Canada, he told them they were entering ‘The land of The Grandmother’ – a wonderful phrase to express Queen Victoria’s matriarchal authority. Three hundred years earlier...
Tudor queens: power, identity and gender
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Real Lives: Who was Sir John Steell?
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: Who was Sir John Steell?
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Real Lives: Rebecca West
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: Rebecca West
