What inspired you to write a book on the history of Modern Britain? There were two motivations. I was interested in rescuing national histories from the nativism of the right. Of course, in Britain that virulent type of nationalism swept the country with Brexit, but across the world authoritarian populists have also evoked nativist histories that they promise will make their country great again.
The publishing of Anglo-Saxon England (ASE) is a source of pride for Cambridge University Press. The recent fiftieth anniversary of the journal provided a compelling moment to celebrate all that it has achieved, and assess its position within a field that has continued to flourish, grow and evolve.…
The article contributes, instead, to new writings about ‘popular individualism’ in this period, showing how large scale political movements around ‘the individual’ reshaped cultural and social life.
My article, ‘Power in Vulnerability’, argues that early modern patriarchal structures provided specific opportunities for widows that were unavailable to other men and women, whether married or single.
Usually slipped quietly between the pages of a coroner’s inquest, these deeply personal letters always gave me the greatest sense that I was hearing the voices of the people I studied.
E Mariah Spencer wonderfully describes how Margaret Cavendish challenged the narrow categories for women in early modern culture...
In uncovering a vast array of contexts in which women acquired knowledge, became literate, and promoted intellectual advancement, Hall has successfully amplified the archivally silent world of women’s education in medieval England.
This article uses the material culture of smoking to connect an American-sourced intoxicant to changing tastes and expressions of masculinity in early seventeenth-century London.
Rather than sinister and corrupt state manipulation, this close look at the instructions, never previously undertaken, suggests a relatively flexible and responsive attempt to balance safety and security with press freedom.
...the observatory staff, the largest portion of whom were adolescent boys hired to do computational work, had to be managed too. Airy worked hard to deskill their positions, turning the observatory into a sort of factory...
The Mitford and Launditch Hundred House of Industry, now the Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum, presents the historian with major opportunities for (re)imagining the past. Our digital modelling necessitated pulling off the mask it currently wears as a museum, stripping away the residue of its time as a twentieth-century Old Age Home, and uncovering the architectural and functional changes that turned it into a Union Workhouse of the New Poor Law period, after 1834.
It shows that the king did not share the interpretation of the Gunpowder plot and the purposes of thanksgiving which were propounded by parliament and by generations of English preachers and writers... as further justification for anti-catholic beliefs and policies.
Conversation and visiting could be considered as aids to piety, by encouraging individuals to debate and reflect on religious doctrine and to share their struggles with their faith and receive encouragement.
In late 1959, before the tour began, the company’s decision to leave behind its only dancer of colour, the South African-born soloist Johaar Mosaval, ignited parliamentary debates and media uproar... [my article] shows how ballet worked as a tool of British ‘soft power’, aiding the decolonizing state in its effort to shore up ties with white South Africans.
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries provide a particularly enlightening example of the ways that the meaning of race can shift and change in surprising ways over time.
School debates are just one example of how the histories of education and childhood can shed light on political change.
In my article, I bring together theological tracts with those concerning diet (dietaries and regimens) to illuminate a printed discourse in which English Protestants sought to define a new relationship to everyday food and eating in light of the Reformation.
Drawing upon original oral histories and reflective testimonies collected as part of the Mass Observation Project, my article explores the ways in which teenage girls’ friendship groups and extended network of classmates and peers shaped their sexual lives.
Two young women in villages less than ten miles apart drew international attention from devout Catholics and sensation seekers.
My article for the Historical Journal examines how the memory of the First World War shaped morale at the start of the Second World War.
What does an empty bottle of concentrated orange juice have to do with colonialism? Some of you may remember the Welfare Orange Juice that the British government provided to pregnant women and young children from the middle of the Second World War until 1971.…
Professor Margot Finn is an historian of Britain since 1750 and the current President of the Royal Historical Society. Her work has ranged from the history of Victorian popular politics to the gendered legal, social and cultural histories of debt and credit in England. …
In early modern England, spectral figures like Madam Savage were regular visitors to the world of the living and a vibrant variety of beliefs and expectations clustered around these questionable shapes.
This blog accompanies Frances Nolan’s Irish Historical Studies article ‘‘The Cat’s Paw’: Helen Arthur, the act of resumption and The Popish pretenders to the forfeited estates in Ireland, 1700–03‘.…
Our article explores anxiety as a gendered emotion in a specific part of a social group across a long period of time: the anxieties of younger sons of the English landed gentry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on recent theories and empirical studies in the history of emotions, we analyse anxiety through the correspondence of 11 gentry families.
This blog accompanies Sara Caputo’s Historical Journal article Alien Seamen in the British Navy, British Law, and the British State, C.…
The sweet banquet was a pervasive dining practice from the 1520s until the middle of the seventeenth century. It quickly spread beyond the court to the country houses of the nobility and gentry...
This blog accompanies the Historical Journal article Voting, Nationhood, and Citizenship in Late-Colonial Africa by Justin Willis, Gabrielle Lynch and Nic Cheeseman.…
To mark the 150th anniversary of the Royal Historical Society, Cambridge University Press are making a selection of ten volumes from the Camden Series freely available to researchers until the end of the year.…
Philip Loft, ‘Litigation, the Anglo-Scottish union and the House of Lords as high court, 1660-1875’, Historical Journal Much ink has been spilled in debates over the union of the Edinburgh and Westminster parliaments in 1707.…
The unlikely coincidence of a local hospital record and a census led by a pioneering physician has enabled the first study charting rates of venereal disease in 18th century England, revealing high infection levels in the city of Chester at this time.…
In this blog Dr Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin discusses her article Gifting cultures and artisanal guilds in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century London which was published in The Historical Journal.…
In this blog Dr Eliza Riedi discusses her article Assisting Mrs Tommy Atkins: Gender, class, philanthropy, and the domestic impact of the South African War, 1899–1902 which was published in The Historical Journal.…
Read Jay Roszman’s recent article, ‘Ireland as a Weapon of Warfare’: Whigs, Tories, and the problem of Irish outrages, 1835 to 1839‘ in The Historical Journal.…
In this blog Professor David Reynold’s discusses his article ‘Britain, the Two World Wars, and the Problem of Narrative’ which was published in The Historical Journal.…
Historicizing Citizenship in Post-War Britain was published in The Historical Journal This article has its roots in a very simple question: what was citizenship?…
Rethinking the English Revolution of 1649 by Jonathan Fitzgibbons was published in The Historical Journal When the axe fell on 30 January 1649, cutting short the troubled life of King Charles I, one eyewitness claims that there followed ‘such a groan’ from the crowds of spectators ‘as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again’.…
Royal Historical Society’s volume 46 of its Camden Fifth Series is focused on the remarkable contributions made by the prolific and prominent scholar of British and constitutional history, Sir William Ivor Jennings (1903-65).…
Q&A with Editor-in-Chief of the Precision Medicine Journal, Dame Anna Dominiczak, for International day of Women and Girls in Science
The English language contains a wealth of insults and terms of abuse. Personal insults attack the core and immutable aspects of a person, such as their race, ethnicity, appearance, age, or a disability.…
Even though findings from genetics and other sciences unequivocally refute biological conceptions of race, this erroneous viewpoint remains widespread among the general public.…
How long will humankind survive? Besides the fact that we have been able to eliminate ourselves with nuclear weapons for decades, even without a third world war, the challenge to take care of the resources of our planet remains; we need to use them in a way that our children and their children can have a place on Earth as well. In this blog post Andreas Losch discusses his recent review article in the International Journal of Astrobiology, The need of an ethics of planetary sustainability
Some disability-related names have dropped out of usage, because they are now considered to be offensive due to their origins. Down Syndrome (Trisomy 21) is one example.…
The March article of Muses – the arts blog from BJPsych International is the first blog of the series. The blog is written by Dr Dami Ajayi, Specialty Doctor, Barnet Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust and Trainee/Blog Editor, BJPsych International.…
Why understanding contemporary youth militancy demands history Al-Shabaab fighters patrolling Afgooye-Mogadishu road (2025) In civil war-era Somalia in the early 1990s, global media headlines about ‘stoned teenagers’ cruising Mogadishu on jeeps mounted with machine guns became synonymous with the construction of Somalia as a ‘chaotic African country’ in which one could be killed for nothing more than ‘the clothes on your back’ (New York Times, 1992).…
How long will humankind survive? Besides the fact that we have been able to eliminate ourselves with nuclear weapons for decades, even without a third world war, the challenge to take care of the resources of our planet remains; we need to use them in a way that our children and their children can have a place on Earth as well. In this blog post Andreas Losch discusses his recent review article in the International Journal of Astrobiology, The need of an ethics of planetary sustainability
It is an article of faith among ordinary Filipinos that American troops will die with Filipino troops defending Philippine claims to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea (SCS).…
Q&A with Editor-in-Chief of the Precision Medicine Journal, Dame Anna Dominiczak, for International day of Women and Girls in Science
More and more research is finding inflammation as a potential contributing factor towards to the development of various mental illnesses. A systematic review was conducted to determine the association between parasitic infection and mental illnesses in various African populations. Two parasite groups were evaluated; helminths and protozoans, and four mental illness classifications; depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, schizotypal disorders and unspecified mental illnesses.
This is the first post in our new series: “Conversations with Authors.” For our inaugural post, we asked Dr. Vesla Weaver to meet (virtually) with Dr.…
The March article of Muses – the arts blog from BJPsych International is the first blog of the series. The blog is written by Dr Dami Ajayi, Specialty Doctor, Barnet Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust and Trainee/Blog Editor, BJPsych International.…
The English language contains a wealth of insults and terms of abuse. Personal insults attack the core and immutable aspects of a person, such as their race, ethnicity, appearance, age, or a disability.…
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Tom Sutcliffe with Paul Collier, Joanna Kusiak and Matthew Xia.
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