I clearly remember the BBC news on February 23, 1981. The second item concerned an attempted coup in Spain in which armed soldiers marched into the Cortes (parliament) and took its members hostage. Their…
Think of medieval food and a whole range of not especially dignified images come to mind; Monty Python’s Holy Grail has a lot to answer for. Mud was far from being a constituent part of the diet of the…
It’s 50 years since Mods and Rockers rumbled by the sea in Margate, Broadstairs and Brighton; since their images were captured for posterity in iconic black and white photos of deck chairs being thrown…
Spies were a glamour news item in Western (and Soviet) press in the 1960s; it was the age of Kim Philby, British spymaster-cum-Soviet spy, and the endless media hunt for the “fifth man” of the Cambridge…
While communities around the UK commemorate the British “conchies”, it is easy to forget the international dimension, especially when it comes to German anti-war activists. This is partly due to how the…
With the centenary commemorations continuing, all things World War I have been filling our screens, pages and radio waves. The latest of these was the BBC’s The Crimson Field, a drama set in a field hospital…
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is easily the most controversial philosopher in the 20th century. To a large extent this is due to his implication in Nazism, which is a scandal to some, a fascinating spectacle…
The government has recently announced changes to the content of GCSE and A level history exams in England. As in previous reforms to the history curriculum, the documents set out the proportion of British…
The coming centenary of the first world war has already prompted some disquiet about a revival of the so-called “history wars”, given the significance of war to ideas of Australian national identity. In…
Thousands of young Australians will gather at Gallipoli this Anzac Day. Our TV screens will fill with faces in the cold light of early dawn, a tear trickling down the cheek in sadness that so many died…
It has been reported that new archaeological finds have pushed back the age of Rome. A team of archaeologists discovered the remains of a wall built to channel water, which dates back to the ninth century…
Next month the Country Women’s Association (CWA) of New South Wales will vote whether or not to put one of their most valuable assets, their Potts Point headquarters, up for sale. The prospect of the sale…
Australia’s legal system may not yet reflect this but in 2014, according to a range of polls, a majority of Australians support same-sex marriage. Two decades ago, such support would have been beyond the…
The Indonesian army and civilian vigilantes killed at least half a million people between 1965 and 1968. Hundreds of thousands more were imprisoned without trial for long periods. Some were sent to remote…
The discovery of 1923 British silent film Love, Life and Laughter, widely hailed as a “lost masterpiece”, is exciting in returning a film celebrated upon its release as a highpoint in British cinema. Fantastic…
Most have heard of the Battle of Waterloo, but who has heard of the volcano called Tambora? No school textbook I’ve seen mentions that only two months before Napoleon’s final defeat in Belgium on June…
A collaboration between historians, text mining, and information visualisation researchers has thrown up new insight into the hunger for sugar, coffee and rubber in the 19th century, as well as how fat…
Controversy over Richard III’s alleged resting place in a lonely Leicester car park has recently erupted after two eminent academics claimed it could not be said with any confidence that the skeleton in…
BBC One’s swaggering epic The Musketeers has concluded with much skulduggery and winning of honour. A second series has already been confirmed after the show opened spectacularly with a consolidated audience…
Writing on Saturday in The Age, popular historian Paul Ham launched a frontal assault on “academic history” produced by university-based historians primarily for consumption by their professional peers…