-
Podcast: End of the World Cults
Podcast
In this podcast Professor Penelope Corfield looks at the history of 'End of the World Cults'.
1. Why do people at times become urgently convinced that 'the End of the World is Nigh?'
HA Members can listen to the full podcast here
Short Reading list for End-of-the-World Cults:
Two wide-ranging introductions:...
Podcast: End of the World Cults
-
Monty’s school: the benign side of Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
Historian article
Field-Marshal Montgomery has a reputation as a strong-willed battle-hardened leader, with a touch of the impetuous. Few know of his charitable side and yet in his later years this side was just as important to his activities. In this article we find out a bit more of this often simplistically...
Monty’s school: the benign side of Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
-
The success of the Salford General Strike of 1911
Historian article
As we approach the centenary of Britain’s only national general strike, this article by Steve Illingworth tells the story of a successful local sympathetic strike in Salford in 1911. He analyses the reasons for the success of the Salford workers and considers why this kind of concerted industrial action could...
The success of the Salford General Strike of 1911
-
Virtual Branch: Birds and British History
Article
In his recent book The Cuckoo's Lea Michael J Warren provides a exploration of how birds are entwined with British history, particularly in our place names.
Join us for an exclusive Q&A with the author to weave together literature, history and ornithology and discover a fascinating heritage that matters deeply now when so...
Virtual Branch: Birds and British History
-
Britain: the regional battlefields that helped to create a nation
Historian article
In this article Geoffrey Carter will be taking a look at battlefields as key elements in British history and how these can be incorporated into the study of history at various levels and in various periods. The regional nature of many historic conflicts is sometimes forgotten but this is an...
Britain: the regional battlefields that helped to create a nation
-
Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
Retracing the trajectories of young survivors in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust
Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
-
Virtual Branch Recording: Crusader Criminals
Article
The religious wars of the Crusades are renowned for their military engagements. But the period was witness to brutality beyond the battlefield. More so than any other medieval war zone, the Holy Land was rife with unprecedented levels of criminality and violence.
In the first history of its kind, Steve Tibble explores...
Virtual Branch Recording: Crusader Criminals
-
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
-
Virtual Branch Recording: From Pirates to Princes: Normans in Eleventh Century Europe
Article
Normandy originated from a grant of land to Rollo, a Viking leader, in the early tenth century. By the end of that century Normans were to be found in southern Italy, then in Britain and, at the end of the eleventh century, in the near East on the First Crusade....
Virtual Branch Recording: From Pirates to Princes: Normans in Eleventh Century Europe
-
Recorded Webinar: African economic development in historical perspective
Article
Popular discussions of Africa often focus on the region’s relative poverty, and ask what role historical events like colonialism and the slave trade have played in shaping its development over time. For a long time, the absence of systematic data on African economies before c. 1960 meant these discussions were...
Recorded Webinar: African economic development in historical perspective
-
Recorded webinar: Britain's eighteenth-century tradition of popular riot and protest
Article
Eighteenth-century Britons were ruled by a restricted oligarchy of landowners and plutocrats. Yet the wider population had a proud tradition of assertiveness and readiness to protest. ‘Britons never will be slaves!’ as the chorus of 'Rule Britannia' (1740) announced pointedly (if somewhat ironically, in view of Britain’s role in the...
Recorded webinar: Britain's eighteenth-century tradition of popular riot and protest
-
Driver Ben Cobey 8th Royal Field Artillery
Historian article
Alf Wilkinson asks why three men were awarded the Victoria Cross during the retreat from Mons in August 1914 and the fourth involved in the action wasn’t. What does that tell us about Britain during the arly days of the Great War?
In August 1914, when war broke out, the...
Driver Ben Cobey 8th Royal Field Artillery
-
(Un)exceptional women: queenship and power in medieval Europe
Historian article
How was the power of a Queen described and how far did It extend? In this article some of the most important queens of the Medieval period are examined for the authority they were able to wield.
When we think of queens, the idea that they are extraordinary women, elevated to the highest status...
(Un)exceptional women: queenship and power in medieval Europe
-
Film: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War
The Searchers
Historian Robert Sackville-West joined the HA Virtual Branch in November 2021 to talk about the topic of his book The Searchers: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War. By the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed...
Film: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War
-
The cultural biography of opium in China
Historian article
Zheng Yangwen shows that despite its association with trade, war and politics, opium was first of all a history of consumption.
Opium has fascinated generations of scholars and generated excellent scholarship on the opium trade, Anglo-Chinese relations, the two opium wars, and Commissioner Lin. The field has diversified in the post-Mao...
The cultural biography of opium in China
-
A woman of masculine bravery: the life of Brilliana, Lady Harley
Historian article
Sara Read introduces us to a woman who challenged expectations during the turbulent years of the early seventeenth century.
In 1622 a pious young woman with a highly unusual first name, Brilliana Conway, sat at her desk doodling her signature on her commonplace book. She had lofty ambitions for her self-development...
A woman of masculine bravery: the life of Brilliana, Lady Harley
-
‘Zulu’ and the end of Empire
Historian article
In this article, Nicolas Kinloch examines the 1964 film Zulu. He suggests what it might tell us about the reality of the British Empire and asks if it has anything to say about the era in which the film was made.
One of the most successful British films of 1964...
‘Zulu’ and the end of Empire
-
What did it mean to be a city in early modern Germany?
Historian article
Alexander Collin examines the significance of cities within the Holy Roman Empire in early modern times. With a strong political identity of their own, cities were at the heart of the Empire’s economy and, also, centres of theological and social change.
If you have ever read a description of a...
What did it mean to be a city in early modern Germany?
-
Gary Sheffield: Origins of the First World War
Podcast
Gary Sheffield, Professor of War studies, the University of Wolverhampton, is one of the UK's foremost historians on the First World War. He is the author of numerous books and previously held posts at the University of Birmingham and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. In April 2014 he spoke at an HA event for teachers...
Gary Sheffield: Origins of the First World War
-
The spy who never spied
Historian article
Claire Hubbard-Hall takes us on a wartime journey across the Atlantic.
On 30 June 1942, the Swedish-American liner SS Drottningholm docked in New York Harbour. As a diplomatic ship it had just completed its run from Lisbon (Portugal) to America. Standing at 538 feet long and 60 feet wide, painted white...
The spy who never spied
-
The Voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot
Classic Pamphlet
Historians have debated the voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot who first discovered North America under the reign of Henry VII. The primary question was who [John or Sebastian] was responsible for the successful discovery. A 1516 account stated Sebastian Cabot sailed from Bristol to Cathay, in the service of...
The Voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot
-
Tank development in the First World War
Historian article
The emergence of the tank as a further weapon of war is inextricably associated with Lincoln where various early models were developed.
By 1915 the Great War had gone just about as far as it could and for the first time, the way an entire war was fought was described...
Tank development in the First World War
-
Archivist CPD
Continuing Professional Development
For advice and information about working in Archives, take a look at the following information from the Archives and Records Association website.
The Archives and Records Association is the leading professional body for archivists, archive conservators and records managers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The principal aims of the Society are: to...
Archivist CPD
-
Bristol and the Slave Trade
Classic Pamphlet
Captain Thomas Wyndham of Marshfield Park in Somerset was on voyage to Barbary where he sailed from Kingroad, near Bristol, with three ships full of goods and slaves thus beginning the association of African Trade and Bristol. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bristol was not a place of...
Bristol and the Slave Trade
-
The British soldier in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars
Historian article
Scum of the earth – or fine fellows?
Carole Divall asks whether the men of the British Army really were ‘the scum of the earth’, as often asserted, or willing soldiers who earned the respect of the French.
‘Soldiers were regarded as day labourers engaged in unsavoury business; a money...
The British soldier in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars
