Looking to the Past to Find Ourselves
February 15, 2021
Michael Hattem– For a few decades, American history has played a prominent role in the most current iteration of culture wars in the United States. We saw this most recently… READ MORE
Tag: British history
Witch Villages and Cursing Wells
January 6, 2021
Thomas Waters— Witchcraft differed from one region to the next, but it also varied over much shorter distances. Certain desolate, inhospitable or generally ominous locations were known as the favoured… READ MORE
The Warm South
December 22, 2020
Robert Holland— On 16 August 1822, it took Lord George Byron, his friend Edward Trelawny, a gaggle of Tuscan soldiers and a local health official an hour to find the… READ MORE
The Secret Army Behind Enemy Lines in World War II
November 4, 2020
Helen Fry— Thousands of courageous men and women led escape lines and acted as couriers and guides across Western Europe as well as other theatres of war, including the Far… READ MORE
Echoes of Edward in British Politics
August 28, 2020
Tom Licence— As Edward the Confessor lay dying in 1066, according to his contemporary biographer, he foresaw the Norman invasion and England’s downfall within a year. Sir Winston Churchill, in… READ MORE
The Letters of King Henry III
August 3, 2020
David Carpenter— King Henry III of England, the son of King John, reigned for fifty-six years from 1216 to 1272, one of the longest reigns on record. He was nine… READ MORE
The Brave Silence of Harry Rée
May 14, 2020
Jonathan Rée— Back in May 2016 I was sitting in the garden of my little cottage outside Oxford when I got an email from someone whose name I didn’t know… READ MORE
Magic: The Ambivalence of Sir Walter Scott
January 29, 2020
Michael Hunter— Sir Walter Scott was second to none in his use of supernatural stories and allusions in a fictional setting. In Rob Roy, for instance, he speaks of fairies as… READ MORE
Remembering (and Forgetting) Epidemics
August 9, 2019
Kevin Siena— Every year my undergraduates are surprised to learn that 50-100 million people died a century ago during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918–20. We can probably thank the… READ MORE
Who Was King Arthur?
January 28, 2019
Nicholas J. Higham— Chapter 56 of the History of the Britons, written in North Wales in 829-30, presented Arthur as a warrior who, with divine aid, led the Britons to… READ MORE
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