What was life really like for women in the medieval period? How did they think about sex, death and God? Could they live independent lives? Few women had the luxury of writing down their thoughts and feelings during medieval times. But remarkably, there are at least four who did: Marie...

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...

Rob Eastaway is an author, speaker and broadcaster. He is regular guest on the award-winning BBC podcast More or Less, and has appeared many times on other Radio 4 programmes including The Today Programme, Word of Mouth and Front Row. His books include the bestselling Why Do Buses Come In...

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....

Anne Curry is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Southampton and a past president of the Historical Association. She is the author of Henry V' in the Penguin Monarchs series, and of many books and articles on the Hundred Years War and the battle of Agincourt. In 2022...

Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford. Her book, Portable Magic: a history of books and their readers, was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2023. This lecture is based on a forthcoming book, The First Elizabethans: England’s sixteenth century Renaissance.

After teaching at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Reading and London, Edith Hall took up a Chair in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham in 2021. She has published more than thirty books on ancient Greece and Rome and their continuing presences in the modern world. She...

The HA Virtual Branch is a great way to keep your history up-to-date, whether you are working or relaxing, all from the comfort of your home. The Virtual Branch is free and open to everybody, and recordings of the talks are made available online after the event for HA members....