New VCH volume – A History of the County of Durham, vol 5, Sunderland

Dec 16, 2015

Famed across Europe during Bede’s time and the heyday of Wearmouth monastery, Sunderland found a less celebrated renown in the twentieth century with the distress of its heavy industries between the wars, and their final extinction in the 1980s. Between those...

New reviews: Colonial Bengal, medieval chronicles, French Revolution, God and Thatcher

Dec 10, 2015

We begin this week with Recasting the Region: Language, Culture and Islam in Colonial Bengal by Neilesh Bose. Markus Daechsel and the author discuss an encyclopedic and important study (no. 1871, with response here). Then we turn to Benjamin Pohl’s Dudo of St...

New Historical Research article

Dec 9, 2015

The ‘stormy latitude of the law’: Chancery Lane and street improvement in late Georgian London. Francis Calvert Boorman Using newspapers, plans, London guides and parish records, this article describes the arguments concerning improvement of the street environment in...

Revealing local history: a follow up

Dec 4, 2015

On 21 November, we held two simultaneous Wikipedia edit-a-thons in London and Leicester as part of the Being Human Festival. We did a lot of promotion of these events beforehand so we thought we should tell you how they went.  An edit-a-thon is an event where editors...

New reviews: Scottish pubs, Missouri Crisis, medieval city politics and history of science

Dec 3, 2015

We start with the aforementioned History of Drinking: The Scottish Pub Since 1700 by Anthony Cooke, as Callum Brown and the author discuss a well-written account of the commerce, sociability and drinking communities of the country (no. 1867, with response here). Next...

New reviews: holy wars, history of knowledge, Soviet spies and Gibbon

Nov 26, 2015

We start this week with Holy War, Martyrdom and Terror: Christianity, Violence and the West by Phillipe Buc, as Cecilia Gaposchkin and the author debate an enormously ambitious book (no. 1863, with response here). Then we have another in our occasional podcast series,...