Blogs about History

What does a picture of a dark-skinned Cleopatra do in a fourteenth-century manuscript produced at the papal court in Avignon?

Welcome back to the (very) occasional newsletter Working On It. It has been 277 days since the last issue. Antisemitism, U.S.A. A couple of years ago, my colleague John Turner and I bounced around ideas …

St Bartholomew’s Hospital, or ‘Bart’s’ as it is most commonly known, is Britain’s oldest hospital. At its historic heart, before now not particularly accessible to the public, is the North Wing. In the summer of …

Review: Herry Perry, Artist and Illustrator by Julian Francis.A guest post by London Historians Member David Fathers. This new publication, written by Julian Francis, reveals, probably for the first time, the work of artist Herry …

Overlooking Green Park is a relic of a lost London. A reminder of a time when aristocratic townhouses lined the west end, hosting parties and displaying their collections of art and antiques in a bid …

Iowa Art Project WPA poster for a Winter Sports Festival on Jan. 20, 1940, in Hubbard Park [Des Moines] and on Jan. 21 at Gilman Terrace [Sioux City], sponsored by the Jr. Chamber of Commerce …

The involvement of nuns in creating beautiful medieval manuscripts is often underappreciated. It is very exciting, then, to discover a new example of their work. While searching for items to include in our Medieval Women …

[This post has been auto-deleted several times, presumably at the request of Carla Rossi, and every time it is reviewed, Google reinstates it quickly ... again and again]A couple of weeks ago I said on …

I recently went on on a trip from Cape Town to Washington, D.C., Seattle, North Cascades National Park, Seattle again, Denver, D.C. again, and then back home to Cape Town, all in three weeks. It …

A few weeks ago, the database publisher Gale organised an online symposium on the archives of social movements called ‘Power to the People‘. I took part with a talk on online radical archives. You can …

Thank you for a fascinating website.I have been researching the Wood family who lived in the area for many generations and in doing so have been looking at thousands of pages of parish records for …

Illustration from the July 27, 1889 issue of Scientific American (Novak Archive) On the morning of July 18, 1889, Professor Edward D. Hogan went up in what can only be described for the time as …

Source: Kevin Brownlow, David Lean: A Biography (London: Faber & Faber, 1997 [orig. 1996]) p. 203 Text: I was making GREAT EXPECTATIONS down at Rochester when the first print came through [of Brief Encounter] …

Traveling in Kham • Jashideley! • Burial in the sky • Kangding, the gateway of Tibet • The Love Song of Kangding • The monastery of Tagong • The Buddhas of Drakgo The city of …

Our review of The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, by David Grann, first published in May 2023. The story of a British naval expedition and subsequent shipwreck in the mid 18th century, …

By the time of Albert Kahn’s death in 1940, the French banker and philanthropist had amassed a collection of more than 72,000 autochrome photographs. Grace Linden explores the Archives de la Planète — his sprawling, …

Fashion has always played a central role in holiday celebrations, from timeless little black dresses to whimsical, tacky sweaters and the excitement of shopping for new festive outfits. Yet some Christmas fashion trends stand out …

19th century lithograph showing the Christkindlesmarkt (Christmas market) in Nuremberg, Germany For those who have only started reading my history of science ramblings during the last year, over the Christmas period, my Christkindlesmarkt from Nürnberg …

In the mid 1950s Geril and Gosta Muller arrived on the west coast. They were born in Denmark and had graduated from a Hotel and Restaurant School in Copenhagen in 1943. Following that Geril had …

Water will get you wet, fire will burn you, and tomato ketchup will be red. We take many things in our lives for granted. Then one day, you are in the supermarket, going to pick …