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...

Professor Malcom Gaskill joined the HA Virtual Branch on Thursday 10th December 2022 to discuss the subject of his book, The Ruin of all Witches, Life and Death in the New World, which was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2022. His research explores the attitudes, beliefs and treatment of people as...

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...

Anna Cusack joined the HA Virtual Branch to discuss unique burial locations in London c.1600-1800. Anna recently completed a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London on the marginal dead of seventeenth and eighteenth-century London, focusing specifically on suicides, executed criminals, Quakers, and Jews and the treatment of their bodily remains...

Why is the term 'Armenian Genocide' controversial, with many countries still not acknowledging a genocide at all? What do we know about the event of 1915 and the plight of the Armenian community in Turkey? How can we grapple with a history that many people want to forget? In this...

Would US President John F. Kennedy have avoided the catastrophe that became the Vietnam War if Lee Harvey Oswald had not assassinated him in Dallas on that fateful day of 22 November 1963? This question – or a version of it – has animated discussions of the Vietnam War for...

In this Virtual Branch webinar we were joined in conversation with Dr Toby Green on his acclaimed book 'A Fistful of Shells'. Shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson Prize and winner of the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, the book explores West Africa from the Rise of the...

In February 2021 we were delighted to continue the HA Virtual Branch with Stephen Bourne, author of a number of books including Black Poppies: Britain’s Black Community and the Great War and Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television. In 2017 South Bank University awarded Stephen an Honorary Fellowship for...

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...

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...

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...

This webinar starts with a basic overview of the city-states of Classical Greece (roughly 500 to 350 BC) and Sparta’s place within their geography and history. It then looks at some common myths about the nature of Spartan society and politics, focusing on areas where recent research has transformed our...

Decline, decadence, crisis, stagnation, and adversity are terms powerfully associated with the reign of Spain’s Planet King; sombre tones that contrast sharply with the glittering cultural and artistic achievements (enhanced by his patronage) that led the period to be dubbed ‘the’ Golden Age, a label consciously competing with France’s later...

One of the oldest myths of the French Revolution is the lethal rivalry between Robespierre and Danton: Robespierre the cold, bloodthirsty dictator who ruled France through Terror, versus Danton, the warm, humane, inspirational orator who wanted to stop Terror. Throughout the 19th century Robespierre was mostly depicted as a villain,...

In this webinar Dr Douds examines the nature of political authority in the nascent Soviet Republic and the institutional structures, practices and ideology of government in the Lenin period. She considers how Communist Party dictatorship and the monolithic party-state emerged in the early years following the October Revolution of 1917...

The Chinese regime never used to want to talk about their country’s experience in World War Two. The Japanese occupation of parts of China was felt to be a humiliating episode that was best forgotten, and the Communists were uncomfortable that their nationalist enemy Chiang Kai-Shek had been China’s main...

In this first webinar about writing historical fiction, author Tony Bradman will talk about how ideas grow from reading and thinking about history. Once you have a good idea, then you need to research it properly, starting with secondary sources for context, then moving on to more specific reading. Visits...