| History
| History
Sometimes it feels uncomfortable being white (I can hear black reader/friends/students laughing at this – “you should try black” they might say.) Viewing Steve McQueen’s great movie 12 Years a Slave provided just one of those moments for the largely…
Our colleagues in Theology and Religious Studies are hosting Professor Alec Ryrie from the University of Durham this week. Professor Ryrie will give a paper, ‘Faith, Doubt and the Problem of “Atheism” in Post-Reformation Britain’, this Wednesday (January 15th) between 5.30 and…
Are there limits to the intellectual inquiries historians may make? Our knee-jerk reaction to this, of course, would usually be – should usually be – ‘no’. I wrote a few months ago about Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch’s recent Silence: A Christian…
Happy new year! Today’s my first day back since the Christmas and New Year break, so apologies for the late good wishes. I was reflecting over Christmas about travel: so many of our staff and students leave Cheltenham for the…
In an age in which historians have long since abandoned the ‘great men’ theory of history, how do we define – should we even use – the term ‘world historical figure’? Our discipline now rightly prefers to complicate our vision of…
There was a very interesting documentary on BBC4 last night on Big Bill Broonzy. I’ve mentioned his song ‘Black, Brown and White’ a few times in class, particularly given its critique of racial discrimination in America in the immediate post-war…
African American History and Shakespeare? A strange mixture, but one that British director Mark Rylance brought together in the recent production of Much Ado about Nothing starring Vanessa Redgrave and the American actor, James Earl Jones at the Old Vic…
This Friday 22nd of November marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. This anniversary has been marked by numerous newspapers articles, television documentaries, radio discussions and even a new film, Parkland, directed by Peter…
The London Review of Books is proud of Alan Bennett’s contention that it is “the most radical literary magazine we have”. Its reputation for radicalism is part of what makes Linda Colley’s most recent essay for the magazine so interesting.…