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Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
Article
Professor Jan Rüger joined the Virtual Branch on 9th February 2023 to talk about his book Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea, tracing a rich history of contact and conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War.
For generations this North Sea island expressed a German...
Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
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Recorded Webinar: Mass-Observing Modern Britain
Article
Mass-Observation is probably the most consistently useful source for the study of mid and late 20th social lives Britain. It was established in 1937 with the aim of investigating ordinary life and developing an 'anthropology of ourselves.' It used a range of different methods to collect information, from recording overheard...
Recorded Webinar: Mass-Observing Modern Britain
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Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2022 by David Olusoga
Article
Professor David Olusoga is a revered TV historian, a writer and a practising academic at Manchester University. In 2022 he was the recipient of the Historical Association's annual Medlicott medal, awarded for outstanding contributions to history.
The recipient of the medal provides the closing lecture of the HA's annual awards evening. Professor...
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2022 by David Olusoga
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Recorded webinar: Revisiting the witch trials
Article
The East Anglian witch hunt under Matthew Hopkins, self-appointed Witchfinder General, has garnered a great deal of popular and historical interest over the years. An image has developed of a zealous, misogynistic young man serving crazed 'justice' against supposed witches, whipping up panic and turning neighbours against each other in...
Recorded webinar: Revisiting the witch trials
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Film: The life and legend of the Sultan Saladin
Article
Jonathan Phillips’s 2020 HA Virtual Conference keynote talk on The life and legend of the Sultan Saladin reveals how a man initially branded as ‘the son of Satan’ became so esteemed in Europe and, through extensive new research, we will follow how his character and achievements have acted as a role model for...
Film: The life and legend of the Sultan Saladin
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Virtual Branch Recording: Assassins and Templars
Article
In this talk, Steve Tibble discusses the Assassins and Templars, two of history's most legendary groups.
One was a Shi’ite religious sect, the other a Christian military order created to defend the Holy Land. Steve Tibble traces the history of these two groups from their origins to their ultimate destruction showing how they survived...
Virtual Branch Recording: Assassins and Templars
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Virtual Branch Recording: The Lines we Draw
Article
In this Virtual Branch Tim Franks, acclaimed BBC Journalist, talks about his personal history and identity drawing on his new biography The Lines we Draw: The Journalist, The Jew and an argument about identity.
We will delve into Tim's experiences as a journalist in some of the world's major conflict zones,...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Lines we Draw
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Recorded webinar: Natural disasters in medieval Britain
Article
Natural disasters frequently affected medieval populations. This webinar explores some examples of what happened when meteorological hazards struck medieval communities, how they reacted and what steps they took to protect themselves against future risks. Through archaeological and historical sources of evidence, Peter Brown explores the diverse impacts unleashed by disasters...
Recorded webinar: Natural disasters in medieval Britain
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Virtual Branch Recording: Women and the Reformations
Article
The Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, have long been told as stories of men. But women were central to the transformations that took place in Europe and beyond. What was life like for them in this turbulent period? How did their actions and ideas shape Christianity and influence societies around the world? ...
Virtual Branch Recording: Women and the Reformations
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Recorded webinar: Indian Suffragettes: women's activism in South Asia and beyond
Article
Between 1917 and 1947, women in the Indian subcontinent were engaged in active debates and noteworthy demonstrations for the vote, building up a national suffrage movement. In this talk Professor Sumita Mukherjee discusses the activities of Indian suffragettes in this period, showing how they were connected with British and other...
Recorded webinar: Indian Suffragettes: women's activism in South Asia and beyond
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Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2025 - Dr Christine Counsell
Dr Christine Counsell
The Historical Association's Medlicott Medal 2025 was awarded to Dr Christine Counsell. The award seeks to recognise individuals from a diversity of backgrounds in their service to history. Read more about Christine, her work and her award here.
As is the custom, Dr Christine Counsell received her award and presented her...
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2025 - Dr Christine Counsell
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Virtual Branch Recording: Locating and Mapping the Jews of Medieval Lincoln
Article
As part of a project to identify and write biographies of all of the Jews of the medieval Lincoln Jewry, Natasha Jenman, Luka Liu, and Josh Outhwaite have been working on records of Jewish property ownership in the city across the thirteenth century. This allows them to identify those individuals who will be...
Virtual Branch Recording: Locating and Mapping the Jews of Medieval Lincoln
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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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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
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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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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
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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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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
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Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
Article
Red Lion Square was long one of London's most genteel addresses, home to nobles, scholars, and professionals. But on 25 March 1818, one house on the south side opened its doors to quite another class of person, as the Mendicity Society began its business. Set up to solve the growing...
Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
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Recorded webinar: Black Germans: the last forgotten victims of the Nazis?
Article
In this webinar, Professor Robbie Aitken looks at the experiences of Black residents in Germany during the Nazi period. Why have they been largely written out of larger histories of the Third Reich? Professor Aitken suggests that there was a genocidal intent in Nazi policy towards them, signalled partly by...
Recorded webinar: Black Germans: the last forgotten victims of the Nazis?
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Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2024 - Professor Catherine Hall
Article
Addressing issues of the legacies of racism created by the transatlantic slave trade and the narratives of its abolition
The Medlicott Medal is awarded annually for outstanding services and contributions to history. This year the Medal went to Professor Catherine Hall, who is Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at...
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2024 - Professor Catherine Hall
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Virtual Branch Recording: Shylock's Venice
The remarkable history of Venice’s Jews and the Ghetto
This is the story of the Venice Ghetto, the corner of the city where Jews were exiled; free to walk the streets by day, locked behind gates and walls at night. Yet, gates and walls notwithstanding, from its establishment in 1516 until the fall of Venice in 1798, the ghetto...
Virtual Branch Recording: Shylock's Venice
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Virtual Branch recording: Empires of the Normans
Virtual Branch Film
How did descendants of Viking marauders come to dominate Western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and Lisbon to the Holy Land and the Middle East?
In this Virtual Branch talk Levi Roach, author of Empires of the Normans, tells a tale of ambitious adventures...
Virtual Branch recording: Empires of the Normans
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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
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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
