History
Anything to do with History
Dayton
@Dayton -
almost 5 years ago
What Have the Romans Done for Us?
Rabbits hit the headlines earlier this year. A fragment of tibia, unearthed in the 1960s during an archaeological dig at Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, was radiocarbon dated by researchers at the University of Exeter. The analysis showed it to be almost 2,000 yea...continued
6 minutes read
Garnet
@Garnet -
8 months ago
‘Bismarck’s War’ by Rachel Chrastil review
Photogravure plate after painting by Neuville, 1882; group of French soldiers relaxing in building yard during the Franco-Prussian War. Prints, Drawings and Watercolors from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. Publi...continued
5 minutes read
Monserrat
@Monserrat -
over 4 years ago
The Case for High Wages
The recent Conservative leadership campaign saw candidates offer both tax cuts and increased government spending, which led to much critical commentary, especially over whether the Conservative Party had abandoned its historic reputation for financial rectitude. Following...continued
6 minutes read
Madalyn
@Madalyn -
11 months ago
Many Happy Returns | History Today
Portrait of James Francis Edward Stuart, by Antonio David, c.1720. The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.On 21 February 1713, the Jacobite claimant to the throne of Britain and Ireland, James Francis Edward Stuart, left France to find refuge in the neighbouring ...continued
6 minutes read
Ericka
@Ericka -
9 months ago
It’s Not 1984
A still from the animated movie based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm, 1954. Alamy Stock PhotoGeorge Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 are two of the uncontested classics of 20th-century English literature, the first a satirical fable about the rise, corruption and fall of Sov...continued
6 minutes read
Josiah
@Josiah -
over 2 years ago
The First Soviet in Ireland
The burgeoning Soviet Union and the nascent Irish Republic seemed to give inspiration to each other, despite – or maybe precisely because of – the peculiar mixes of class and national interests they shared. Lenin, who reportedly spoke English with an Irish accent, was an ...continued
6 minutes read
Raoul
@Raoul -
almost 3 years ago
‘Can’t Tek No More’ | History Today
In 1981 long-standing anger about racism, unemployment and social deprivation broke out into violent protests across many of Britain’s inner cities. It began in Brixton in April, when heavy handed police tactics provoked three days of rioting, and similar outbreaks follow...continued
6 minutes read
Rex
@Rex -
almost 4 years ago
The Press in a Mess
The history of the British press is a tortuous mess, bedevilled by the twin dangers of proprietorial interference and insolvency. A bizarre example can be reconstructed from deep within the annals of the Spectator, 10,000 issues old this month. During a whirlwind two year...continued
6 minutes read
Emmie
@Emmie -
5 months ago
Power and Populism in Ancient Greek Courts
A rule of all modern constitutions is that courts should remain apolitical. In reality, however, separation of powers is an ideal, not a fact. Trials should not be popularity contests, nor should elections be litigated – but this can be a hard separation to achieve. While...continued
6 minutes read
Priscilla
@Priscilla -
about 2 years ago
Libraries for All | History Today
The library from the parish of Gorton, one of five bequeathed by Humphrey Chetham in the 1650s, now held at Chetham’s Library in Manchester. Only two of the libraries have survived intact.When the Manchester merchant and financier Humphrey Chetham bequeathed five parish l...continued
6 minutes read
Elvie
@Elvie -
over 4 years ago
Who’s Afraid of the Jazz Monsters?
Moral panic in 1920s’ America was expressed in headlines such as one from the Kansas City Kansan of 16 January 1922 that trumpeted the perils of ‘Vampires, Jazz, Joyrides [and] Turkish Immorality’. While ‘vamps’, motorcars and Eastern influences were favourite targets of ...continued
6 minutes read
Roger
@Roger -
over 2 years ago
Britannia’s Black Spartacus | History Today
Toussaint Louverture, 19th-century engraving. Alamy.In June 1846, 13 years after slavery in the British Empire had been outlawed, and just at the moment when the Sugar Duties Act removed protective tariffs for plantation owners in British colonial possessions in the West ...continued
6 minutes read
Rex
@Rex -
over 1 year ago
We are Family | History Today
Louis IX carrying the Sceptre and the Hand of Justice, from Registre des Ordonnances de L’Hotel du Roi, c.1320. Bridgeman Images.Late in August 1179 the king of France, Louis VII, crossed the Channel and landed at Dover. There he was met by Henry II, the man now married t...continued
6 minutes read
Juliet
@Juliet -
9 months ago
Man Down
A British military map-reading class in Egypt, November 18th, 1941. Library of Congress. Public Domain.I was 14 when I began to notice that my relationship with war stories had a different bent from those of my male relatives. My fascination with uncontroversial classics ...continued
6 minutes read
Ryleigh
@Ryleigh -
6 months ago
‘Hunting the Falcon’ by John Guy and Julia Fox review
‘The Courtship of Anne Boleyn’ by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, c. 1846. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Public Domain.The life of Anne Boleyn life was utterly remarkable, but it was not destined to be so. Initially the future queen seemed set for a conventional life as an up...continued
6 minutes read
Meggie
@Meggie -
over 1 year ago
Upon Clouded Hills | History Today
Queen Elizabeth as ‘Jerusalem’ is sung at the AGM of the Women’s Institute, Albert Hall, May 1946. Shutterstock.‘Jerusalem’, the poem written by William Blake which was set to music by Charles Hubert Parry during the First World War, is usually assumed to be one of the mo...continued
6 minutes read
Myles
@Myles -
6 months ago
‘The Weimar Years’ by Frank McDonough review
Couples dancing in Weimar Republic Berlin by photographer Erich Salomon, c. 1930. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Public Domain.Who – or what – killed Weimar democracy? It’s an important question, without as obvious an answer as we might think. In The Weimar Years ...continued
5 minutes read
Jaydon
@Jaydon -
about 1 month ago
Political Graffiti in Georgian Britain
In December 1731 an anonymous author was preparing for the publication of the third edition of an odd little book that had already taken Britain by storm. The Merry thought, or Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany was a collection of graffiti – line after line transcribe...continued
6 minutes read
Wilmer
@Wilmer -
about 1 year ago
This Flammable Isle | History Today
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo.The Blazing World tells of how the people of England challenged the divine right of kings, toppled tyrants and rejected absolutism by resisting military mobilisation, petitioning and, where necessary, r...continued
6 minutes read
George
@George -
about 3 years ago
Zombies, Cannibals and Werewolves | History Today
Over the centuries, claims of cannibalism have been used repeatedly to justify slavery and imperialism. Indigenous Americans and enslaved Africans, it was said, were uncivilised and un-Christian people, whose savagery could be curbed only by European control.After the Atl...continued
6 minutes read
Hannah
@Hannah -
almost 2 years ago
The Other 300 | History Today
19th-century drawing of the Battle of the Winwaed (655) between Mercia and Northumbria, by Patrick Nicolle © Look and Learn/Bridgeman Images.The Gododdin is a fascinating, but frustratingly elusive, piece of literature. Contained in an incomplete late 13th-century Welsh m...continued
5 minutes read
Erik
@Erik -
8 months ago
‘Psychonauts’ by Mike Jay review
Opium Smokers Served Fruit and Bread, c. 1750. blue-robed Sufi mystics, white-robed clerics, and nobles in Mughal India sit in various states of intoxication. The Cleveland Museum of Art (CC0 1.0). As early as the 1790s, doctors, scientists and other specialists sought to...continued
5 minutes read
Muriel
@Muriel -
9 months ago
‘Three Worlds’ by Avi Shlaim review
Jewish refugees in Iraq, April 1951. Wikimedia CommonsAvi Shlaim, a British historian of the Middle East, was forced to leave Baghdad with his family for Israel as a five-year-old by an Iraqi government that cared little for minorities. Some 110,000 Jews left Iraq in 1950...continued
6 minutes read
Felicita
@Felicita -
over 4 years ago
Famine Within Reach | History Today
Between the winter of 1958 and the spring of 1961, it is variously estimated that between 16.5 and 45 million Chinese living in rural areas died of starvation and related illnesses, a cataclysm now known as the Great Famine. Its onset coincided with the start of Chairman ...continued
6 minutes read
Abbie
@Abbie -
about 1 year ago
Is Violence the Answer? | History Today
Demonstrators outside Leeds Crown Court on the first day of the trial of the Leeds Bonfire Night 12, June 1975. Photograph by Max Farrar © Max Farrer.‘We do not advocate unprovoked violence but if we are attacked then we are left with no alternative but to defend ourselve...continued
6 minutes read