Defying the Iron Duke: assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom

The approaching bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo has stimulated debate about how it should be commemorated. This article reports a collaboration between the Waterloo200 Committee and Tom Wheeley, history teacher, to create a lesson sequence analysing the causes, consequences and significance of the battle. The article adds to a long-standing tradition of classroom practice using depth to provide access to overview. They also add to a growing discourse that explores how younger pupils can be engaged with the practices and products of professional historians. In this case, drawing on recent historiographical debates, they sought to engage pupils with how historians construct grand narratives from the many different voices offered in personal testimonies from the battle...