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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  • The President's Column 127

    Article

    It would be a pretty good bet to claim that many people in the UK - young and old - have heard of the sinking of the Marie Rose in Southampton Waters in mid-July 1545, its recovery, and now the splendid reconstruction and display in Portsmouth. I would also bet...

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  • The President's Column 129

    Article

    Recently I was fortunate enough to participate in an episode of the BBC Radio 3 debate programme Freethinking, which addressed the 500th anniversary of the publication of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. I was fortunate to be joined by John Guy, author of many important books on More’s career and two...

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  • The President's Column 131

    Article

    The autumn is upon us. And Poldark is back! The images of the beautiful Cornish coast around Treen, Porthcurno, and St Michael’s Mount are welcome visitor to the screen asthe grimy nights draw in. The television series, reborn from the novels of Winston Graham, and the earlier screen adaptations of...

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  • The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902

    Article

    Dr Jacqueline Beaumont Hughes considers some aspects of the role of the Press during the Boer War. The conflict between Great Britain and the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State which slipped into war in October 1899 was to become the most significant since the Crimean war. It...

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  • The Rainbow Circle and the New Liberalism

    Article

    The publication of the first volume of Paddy Ashdown’s Diaries in 2000 has focused renewed attention on the relationship between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party. From the first meeting between Ashdown and Tony Blair at the latter’s house on 4 September 1994, less than seven weeks after his...

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  • The Reformed Electoral System in Great Britain, 1832-1914

    Article

    The struggle for parliamentary reform between 1830 and 1832 has long been regarded as one of the decisive battles of British political history. The Tories lamented that the passage of the Reform Bill meant the destruction of the constitution. Middle class Radicals welcomed the Reform Bill as the instrument that...

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  • The Right Kind of History. An Interview with Nicola Sheldon, Jenny Keating and John Hamer

    Multipage Article

    Sir David Cannadine has written the book that tells the history of history in schools. On the podcast on this site he outlines some of his reasons for wanting to write the book and what his findings were. But alongside his name on the front cover are his research team...

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  • The Rise and Fall of the Constitutional Press, 1858-1860

    Article

    Amy de Gruchy provides an account of a short-lived newspaper of the Conservative Right which published work by Charlotte Yonge. The Constitutional Press was born in March 1858 following the formation of the second minority Conservative government under Lord Derby. It was a weekly paper containing Parliamentary reports, British and...

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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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  • The Second World War

    Article

    On 5 September 1939 the German Führer, Adolf Hitler, paid a surprise visit to the corps which was in the forefront of his army's ferocious assault upon Poland. As they passed the remains of a smashed Polish artillery regiment, the corps commander, General Guderian, astonished Hitler by telling him that...

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  • The Slave trade and British Abolition, 1787-1807

    Article

    In the 1780’s the British slave trade thrived. In that decade alone more than one thousand British and British colonial slave ships sailed for the slave coasts of Africa and transported more than 300,000 Africans. There was little evidence that here was a system uncertain about its economic future. If...

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  • The Somme: a last innings for Yorkshire and England

    Article

    Ronan Thomas explores a tragic sporting outcome of the Battle of the Somme. At the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, the losses suffered by the British Army still have the power to shock. On 1 July 1916 alone nearly 60,000 men became casualties, of whom almost 20,000 were...

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  • The Tale of Two Winstons

    Article

    Winston Churchill is generally regarded as one of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century. As Prime Minister he led Britain to victory against the Nazi war machine, leading Time to name him ‘Man of the Year' in 1940 and ‘Man of the Half Century' in 1949. As recently...

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  • The Tower and The Victorians: Politics and Leisure

    Article

    At the beginning of the nineteenth century about 15,000 people visited the Tower of London each year to enjoy a spectacle which had taken shape over the previous century and a half. Patriotic tableaux, trophies of victory, vast arrays of arms and armour, the menagerie and the Crown Jewels were...

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  • The Transport Revolution 1750-1830

    Article

    The period 1750-1830, traditionally marking the classical industrial revolution, achieved in Great Britain what Professor Rostow has called the economy's "take-off into self-sustained growth". A revolution in transportation was part of the complex of changes - industrial, agricultural, mercantile and commercial - occurring roughly concurrently.The impetus to transport change is...

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  • The Undergrowth of History

    Article

    We can do all kinds of things with the past - examine it analytically, or question whether it ever existed, or churn it up inside ourselves until it turns into personal experience. We can dream it as we lounge amidst a heap of ruins, or petrify it into a museum;...

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  • The Urban Working Classes in England 1880-1914

    Article

    On reading the title of this article, any reader at all familiar with the social history of late Victorian and Edwardian England is likely to think of the revelations at the time of the extent of urban poverty. Two major enquiries, one into London poverty, and the other into poverty...

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  • The Uses of History in the Twenty First Century

    Article

    During the last century or so there has developed a new ‘public role’ for history: the past as personal history, a vital element in the nourishing of people in society. During the past decades a new perception of what history is has manifested itself on two levels: first a shift of...

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  • The Versailles Peace Settlement

    Article

    This classic pamphlet takes you through the Paris Peace Conference and the 'German Question', Peacemaking and the Treaty of Versailles, Europe and the German question after Versailles.

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  • The Victorian Age

    Article

    This Classic Pamphlet was published in 1937 (the centenary of the accession of Queen Victoria, who succeeded to the throne on June 20, 1837). Synopsis of contents: 1. Is the Victorian Age a distinct 'period' of history? Landmarks establishing its beginning: the Reform Bill, railways, other inventions, new leaders in...

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