Britain & Ireland

What was it about industrialisation that led to the emergence of a woman’s movement in Victorian Britain? Why do we see so many people fighting for so many rights and liberties in this period and what are the origins of some of the issues we still campaign on today? This section includes our major series on Social and Political Change in the UK from 1800 to the present day. There are also articles and podcasts on the often violent relationship between England and Ireland during this period and England’s changing relationship with Scotland and Wales. Read more

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  • Imperialism resurgent: European attempts to 'recolonise' South East Asia after 1945

    Article

    ‘To think that the people of Indochina would be content to settle for less [from the French] than Indonesia has gained from the Dutch or India from the British is to underestimate the power of the forces that are sweeping Asia today'. An American adviser in 1949 cited: Robin Jeffrey...

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  • Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar

    Article

    Whenever British radar is discussed the name that usually comes to mind is that of Robert Watson Watt. Our history books and our dictionaries of biography consistently attribute the discovery of radar in Britain solely to Watson Watt, with little or no mention of the key role played by his...

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  • The price of reform: the people's budget and the present trauma

    Article

    When Lloyd George succeeded Asquith as Chancellor of the Exchequer in April 1908, his first task was to introduce the old age pensions Asquith had initiated. His second was to prove even more momentous. On 29 April 1909 he presented what has become known as "The People's Budget". The task...

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  • President's Column 107

    Article

    I am writing this in early September. Although some universities have altered their academic year so that it begins earlier, I am lucky that Southampton does not have students returning until the end of the month. For me, September is vital for research and writing. It began with a bang...

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  • Remembering Neville Chamberlain

    Article

    Brent Dyck is a Canadian teacher and a previous contributor to The Historian. In this short essay he offers us his objective interpretation of the achievements of Neville Chamberlain. For some what he says may seem surprising and for others it might even be controversial. However, editorially it seemed entirely proper...

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  • The Advent of Decimalisation in Britain: 1971

    Article

    Decimal Day in Britain was Monday 15 February 1971. New coins and notes were circulated. There was no special issue postage stamp to commemorate the occasion, only a new series with some unfamiliar values, such as 7½p instead of 1s 6d. The fortieth anniversary of the arrival of decimal currency...

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  • The President's Column 106

    Article

    I wrote my last column shortly after the Great Debate. This time it is a few weeks after the AGM in Sheffield, which I much enjoyed, and I hope others did too. In recent years the AGM has become the main means whereby the HA can get together as a...

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  • 1914: The Coming of the First World War

    Article

    This pamphlet argues that the outbreak of the First World War represented not so much the culmination of a long process started by Bismarck and his successors, as the relatively sudden breakdown of a system that had in fact preserved the peace and contained the dangerous Eastern Question for over...

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  • British Women in the Nineteenth Century

    Article

    A short pamphlet surveying the historical record of rather more than half the population of Britain over a period of a hundred years must of necessity be sketchy and incomplete. The great interest in history of women which has arisen in the last few decades has produced a great deal...

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  • Stalinism

    Article

    Stalin's remarkable career raises quite fundamental questions for anyone interested in history. Marxists, whose philosophy should cause them to downgrade the role of ‘great men' as an explanation of great events, have problems in fitting Stalin into the materialist interpretation of history: did not this man ride rough-shod over the...

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  • Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890

    Article

    One hundred and twenty years ago the advent of the first red May Days caused major concern across Europe. To general surprise, in 1890 and the next few years some of the largest rallies occurred in London. In Britain the main demonstration on the nearest Sunday to May Day passed...

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  • Charles Gilpin

    Article

    Family Background and Early Life Charles Gilpin was born in Bristol in 1815, the son of James Gilpin, a Quaker draper, and Mary Gilpin nee Sturge. The Sturges were a notable Quaker Liberal family, active in the campaign against slavery. Their relatives included the Darbys of Coalbrookdale. Charles Gilpin was...

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  • Hammer, House of Horror: The making of a British film company, 1934 to 1979

    Article

    The now legendary film company Hammer made such classics as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), plus their numerous sequels and subsequent remakes of old Universal Gothic chillers (The Curse of the Werewolf, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera), as well as making international stars out of Peter...

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  • The New Imperialism

    Article

    This Classic Pamphlet first published in 1970 comes with a new introduction written by the author M. E. Chamberlain.The New Imperialism - Introduction by M. E. Chamberlain Professor Emeritus at Swansea University. May 2010.When this pamphlet was first published imperialism was a hot political topic and battle raged between Marxist and...

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  • The Industrial Revolution in England

    Article

    Revolutions of the magnitude of the industrial revolution in England provoke historical controversy: such a revolution is a major discontinuity which a profession more skilled in explaining small changes finds difficult to understand. A revolution that touches a whole society is so diffuse that its significant events are difficult to...

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  • Edwardian England

    Article

    The Edwardian era is still less than a lifetime away. Yet the memoirs of surviving Edwardians, written any time between the nineteen-twenties and the nineteen sixties, have often made it sound like a remote epoch. The years between the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the outbreak of the...

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  • The National Memorial to William Ewart Gladstone

    Article

    To stand amidst the books in St Deiniol's Library is an intimidating experience for it is an encounter with the restless, brooding intelligence that was William Ewart Gladstone. Lord Runcie of Cuddesdon, Archbishop of Canterbury (18 May 1998) The ‘Temple of Peace' St Deiniol's Library was founded in 1894 by...

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  • The 'Penny Dreadful'

    Article

    "I wish I know'd as much as you, Dick. How did you manage to pick it up?" "Mother taught me most, and I read all the books I can get." "So do I; sich rattling tales, too ---‘The Black Phantom; or, the White Spectre of the Pink Rock.' It's fine,...

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  • Towards Reform in 1809

    Article

    Two hundred years ago it must have seemed to some as if the time for political and economic reform in Britain had arrived. A number of the necessary conditions appeared to be in place: recent examples from America and France showing how readily and rapidly established systems could be overturned...

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  • The Road to Dunkirk

    Article

    Seventy years after the outbreak of the Second World War, British foreign policy in the 1930s remains as controversial as ever. While appeasement is now a byword for political failure, the reasons for its adoption and the responsibility of the statesmen concerned are constantly debated. In general, opinion looks unfavourably...

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