History

Anything to do with History

E77c53a55e474cb5ad875ffdba0be8e5 Leda @Leda - about 1 month ago
Reading It Wrong by Abigail Williams review
In a radio sketch from John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, a secondary-school teacher diplomatically attempts to negotiate the dubious interpretations of Macbeth offered by his students: ‘That’s an interesting reading …That’s a really interesting answer’ – and, at the su...continued
5 minutes read
3917a54ef2e71f0b2d57dd0d63e0f2fb Cameron @Cameron - 2 months ago
‘American Journey’ by Wes Davis review
In 1918 the American industrialist Henry Ford undertook an auto-camping road trip in the Great Smoky Mountains at the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. The grand culmination of various shorter trips exploring rural America, his companions – as on the previous s...continued
5 minutes read
3830cba028d7333d81fee686fab573c8 Kari @Kari - about 1 month ago
‘Reading It Wrong’ by Abigail Williams review
In a radio sketch from John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, a secondary-school teacher diplomatically attempts to negotiate the dubious interpretations of Macbeth offered by his students: ‘That’s an interesting reading …That’s a really interesting answer’ – and, at the su...continued
5 minutes read
0a3d7829480267a63997ae3c91bb2ebe Adelia @Adelia - about 1 month ago
‘Rites of Passage’ by Judith Flanders review
Alfred, Lord Tennyson died a poet’s death. His son Hallam wrote that, after listening to a prayer taken from his own verses, he lay in bed, a ‘figure of breathing marble, flooded and bathed in the light of the full moon streaming through his oriel window’, clasping a volu...continued
6 minutes read
7caeec7c88c24f5d4f9a4c169eb9f70c Maureen @Maureen - about 3 years ago
The Battle of St Louis
Louis statue, St. Louis, Missouri. Bill Grant/Alamy.Protesters gathered in June 2020 at the foot of the monumental equestrian statue of Louis IX of France that stands in front of the Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. Crossing out the word ‘Saint’, they scrawled ‘persecut...continued
Stlouis 1
1 minute read
54935a891902e2aabfc16d0ef9ab31da Americo @Americo - about 2 months ago
Arguing with the Dead | History Today
The dominating feature of Committee Room 10 in the Houses of Parliament is an enormous painting of King Alfred, by George Frederick Watts. Alfred, striking a heroic pose, is, in the words of the caption: ‘inciting the Saxons to resist the landing of the Danes’. Beneath th...continued
6 minutes read
036a71cbab8d3106d8fc0389f9b4ef6f Eleanora @Eleanora - over 4 years ago
Virgin Islands of the Atlantic
Oceanic history is as much concerned with the shores of the oceans that interacted with one another as with the watery spaces in between, but there is a third type of space that also needs attention: islands in mid-ocean. Early maps of the Atlantic often exaggerated the s...continued
Virgin islands carousel 3
1 minute read
Bbe6309a1d067c75a83f525952377ae7 Rahsaan @Rahsaan - over 2 years ago
Contrabands of War | History Today
The day after Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, three enslaved men – Frank Baker, James Townsend and Shepard Mallory – commandeered a boat and rowed across the James River from Hampton to Fortress Monroe. There they asked Federal troops manning the fort to grant th...continued
5 minutes read
725ac8c62bcc32f06195cf20b372a31a Muriel @Muriel - over 2 years ago
Marketing the Menace | History Today
It is 70 years since Dennis the Menace’s first appearance in the Beano. His evolution since 1951 reflects a changing historical landscape, as he has adapted to match the shifts in attitude and preference that have accompanied the comic’s long history. The Beano, an overlo...continued
6 minutes read
6232f8a636fcadbbec0b89d4f6ded6e2 Ericka @Ericka - 4 months ago
Why the Oracle of Delphi Still Beguiles
Phoebus Apollo, the sun god, had a good eye for an inspiring location. According to the Homeric Hymn to him (not by Homer and probably dating from the sixth century BC) Apollo himself chose Delphi as the dwelling for his oracle. In order to establish it there, he first sl...continued
6 minutes read
39b1531710d6d8cc8cd7a9a0bb2d9867 Ryleigh @Ryleigh - about 3 years ago
Future Leaders or Social Outcasts?
IQ testing using a ‘form board’, US, 1955 © Hulton Getty Images.Debates about ‘gifted’ children are fundamentally about human flourishing and enhancement. They also reflect broader concerns about the future and about the roles and responsibilities of governments, parents,...continued
Gifted
1 minute read
56a34dc91390858efd1999c86a89c348 George @George - 9 days ago
‘Remembering Peasants’ by Patrick Joyce review
If like me you are a baby boomer of European extraction, then odds are that some of your grandparents were peasants. One of my grandmothers was born in a sod cabin of her father’s own construction on the Nebraska plains. One of my grandfathers made his living buying hides...continued
6 minutes read
041490c94bd26a3efdf85d49d9b013ba Alexie @Alexie - over 3 years ago
Love Sick | History Today
In 1796, Matthew ‘the Monk’ Lewis published a four-stanza poem telling the tragic tale of his ill-fated heroine, ‘Crazy Jane’. By 1799, Lewis’ words had been put to music and Jane’s story of heartbreak and mental collapse was shared across the country in music halls, asse...continued
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B4a2c9b63fd68a080a47d2a35293e167 Webster @Webster - over 3 years ago
After Me, Conquest | History Today
Godwine, a man who had risen to become Earl of Wessex during the reign of Cnut (d. 1035), sailed up the Thames in 1052. Having paused in Southwark to recruit Londoners, Godwine took advantage of a rising tide to continue upriver, his ships sticking to the southern bank. A...continued
6 minutes read
37ec91099450fc2fc637c77e78953759 Anderson @Anderson - about 1 month ago
‘Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe’ by Noel Malcolm review
Regular users of social media may be aware that the peach emoji is used to indicate not only the fruit in question but also the buttocks. This metaphor is not new. It was used in the middle of the 16th century by Francesco Berni, a Florentine poet, who assured his readers...continued
6 minutes read
3fb9059c39d0a39c0a9f0cf17b7858fc Priscilla @Priscilla - about 3 years ago
Life after Death in Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt is commonly believed to have been a society enthralled by the notion of eternal life. Shelley’s Ozymandias, describing an inscription on a shattered, ancient statue, captures this in its coda:Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside remains. R...continued
6 minutes read
7094e9deddcf03241ed9894017ba09bc Rose @Rose - about 3 years ago
The Politics of Pancakes | History Today
On Shrove Tuesday 1270, the monks of Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest rewarded their lay manorial workers with pancakes, with the youngest employees also receiving a feast of beef, cheese and ale in the great hall of the abbey’s infirmary. This is the earliest known evide...continued
5 minutes read
2f3192374c3e88221a336dc5d319c4a3 Zetta @Zetta - over 2 years ago
The Morality of Medicine | History Today
‘Modern medical science has given us a choice where there was once none.’ So said John Simon at the International Medical Congress in London in 1881. Simon, who had been the UK’s first Chief Medical Officer, was speaking about the purpose and value of state medicine, the ...continued
6 minutes read
725ac8c62bcc32f06195cf20b372a31a Muriel @Muriel - over 3 years ago
William Cecil’s Perilous Year | History Today
William Cecil served as Elizabeth I’s senior minister from her accession in 1558 to his death in 1598. He ceaselessly counselled, planned and manoeuvred, the solid foil to a brilliant and complex woman. In 1571, the queen rewarded him with a peerage, creating him Baron Bu...continued
6 minutes read
192059156a7075f96be3d979645bdbcc Zackery @Zackery - 9 months ago
Good for Nothing | History Today
The Bull, etching by Paulus Potter, Dutch, 1650. Album / Alamy Stock PhotoSir John Romilly, the Master of the Rolls – one of the highest judicial offices in England – declared in 1859 that, even where a charitable trust was of the ‘most useless description’, the Chancery ...continued
Charities%20opener
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1a914154cd263fa68f1b8d6529ef63dd Sandrine @Sandrine - almost 3 years ago
Meeting an Urgent Need | History Today
During the First World War the British government persistently rejected calls to legalise marriages between a man and the widow of his brother killed in action. Drawing no distinction between blood bonds and those acquired by marriage, sections of the Church of England re...continued
5 minutes read
Dd00644dc8212e2e9fd2e6ce7a756bbf Jerrold @Jerrold - over 2 years ago
Can’t Go On | History Today
‘We just cannot go on living like this’, Mikhail Gorbachev tells his wife, Raisa, on the eve of his nomination as Soviet leader. Nor did they. Gorbachev was to be the last leader of the Soviet Union. Instead of solving the moribund Marxist-Leninist system’s many problems,...continued
6 minutes read
1f7b605070774dac8bb3c859143de9d2 Jeffrey @Jeffrey - 24 days ago
‘Revolusi’ by David Van Reybrouck review
‘The apologies for the history of slavery and the police actions, as made by the king, will be withdrawn.’ So promised the Netherlands’ right-wing firebrand lawmaker Geert Wilders ahead of the country’s 2023 election. On this subject, Wilders is no far-right outlier. Earl...continued
5 minutes read
69ab36bf73ce82cc3579c8f2504f3bac Gregoria @Gregoria - almost 3 years ago
Trading Places | History Today
When the government of England and Wales created the National Debt in 1694, those from the higher echelons of society were given opportunities to invest money. Through government bonds, lotteries and eventually publicly listed companies the stock exchange was born, effect...continued
6 minutes read
422f200971248def7ffc1673a54fa3cb Grayce @Grayce - over 3 years ago
Making Massacre | History Today
Dunblane, Manchester Arena, Sandy Hook: the place names evoke grief and horror, a cry of anguish pinned to a map, each the site of a massacre. Such atrocities might seem as old as time, but the word itself is not. Massacre worked its way into the English language in the l...continued
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