2015 is something of a year of anniversaries. It is 50 years since Churchill's death, 200 years since Waterloo, 300 since the Jacobite ‘Fifteen', 600 since Agincourt, 800 since Magna Carta. Clearly every year brings around its own crop of anniversaries; this year just seems to have quite a few with a peculiarly British flavour. As a new head of department I was asked if I would create some resources for students to share in tutor time, which focused on one anniversary in particular.

For 1215 is also 750 years since the first elected Parliament in England. As a political obsessive, I was also very aware that there is a general election coming (at the time of writing it does not seem like too much of a hostage to fortune to call it a very close one). It seemed like a perfect opportunity to build a sequence of lessons in which history and citizenship could come together. Even better, this wasn't even going to have to happen in my curriculum time: the more time for history to be taught, the better...