Issue 41 – Gender and Identity In Britain, the women’s liberation movement brought women’s history from the margins into the mainstream of historical thinking, seeking to trace both inequality and oppression through the past and to rediscover female experiences left out by traditional historiography. As the field developed, a gendered approach to history has provided […]
1st May 1963: Cuban Premier Fidel Castro with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during his visit to the Soviet Union. (AP Photo/ Tass) 4th May 1963: A civil rights demonstrator is attacked by a police dog in Birmingham, Alabama. (AP Photo/ Bill Hudson) 11th June 1963: The Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, burns himself in Saigon […]
Professor Paul Fouracre’s book Frankish History: Studies in the Construction of Power has recently been published in Ashgate’s Variorum Collected Studies Series. Dr Yangwen Zheng edited The Chinese Chameleon Revisited: From the Jesuits to Zhang Yimou which was also published recently. Dr Pedro Ramos Pinto wrote a chapter entitled ‘Why Inequalities Matter’ published in Reducing […]
The story of the Battle of Agincourt follows the age-old narrative of the beloved underdog rising against the odds. A legacy of victory and glory would become synonymous with Henry V after this epic episode in medieval history. An idyllic tale of knights, courage and king; it is recounted even in modern memory, but how […]
The fruits of the Yugoslavia’s relationship with socialism once yielded 91% literacy rates, free health care, and for 8 years, the fastest rate of economic growth in the world. However, like many romances, external meddlers fostered internal conflict and eventual break-up. What followed tore the region apart. From 1992-93 the Bosnian war raged between rival […]
It is hard to imagine what Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector from Austria who was executed for his refusal to pledge his allegiance to Hitler during The Second World War, had to go through. Bearing in mind that he had to sacrifice his large family’s (Jägerstätter had a wife and three daughters) interests and give […]
The Age of Enlightenment was a movement towards reason and rationality in the 18th century in Europe. This movement primarily altered perceptions of politics, philosophy, science, and communications. The Enlightenment advanced ideals of liberty, freedom and equality. This was an extremely progressive movement. Ideas of enlightenment spread through Salons where discussions and debates took place […]
Although the most common use of torture throughout history has been as an interrogation technique of law enforcement, the practice has been used in many different ways over the years, with other purposes of torture found in inducing public terror, a means of reform, and most uncommonly, as satisfying sadistic pleasure. During the period of […]
Have you ever done an internet search for ‘terrorist attacks since 9/11? I suspect not. But if you did, as I have to write this piece, you’d be astounded at the number. Dependent upon how you look at them, there have been 25-30 major terrorist attacks in the last 15 years, attributable to Islamic extremism. […]
From the outset, Sebastian Faulks’s ‘Birdsong’ is a novel of parallels. Parallels between joyous youth and broken youth, love and hatred, peacetime and wartime, past and present. We are introduced to Stephen Wraysford and follow his journey through War and Peace. Faulks’s intense imagery and narration provides the reader with a graphic insight into […]
‘The Monster of the Andes’, ‘The Butcher of Rostov’, ‘The Wolf of Moscow’, The ‘Rippers’, Jack, Camden and Yorkshire. Serial killers, the very embodiment of brutality, bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses of the baying public like no other criminal type. Throughout history, serial killers have been sensationalised, their crimes detailed in explicit detail […]
The 1960s were a period of cultural radicalism. During the civil rights era, counterculture became prevalent. From the hippie movement to London’s Notting Hill Carnival, cultural expression emerged not simply as a means of voicing oneself but also as a form of protest. Civil rights and music culture in America were notably intertwined and expressed […]
The region occupied by the people of Israel and Palestine has seen more than a thousand years of bloodshed. Modern conflict follows a long line of violent history. Historically the state now known as Israel was located along the lucrative Silk Road from China, what Samuel P. Huntington would describe as the ‘cultural edge’ or […]
Just five days after his second inauguration as President of the US, Donald Trump signed an order to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. The decision formed part of his new executive order, entitled ‘Putting America First in international climate agreements’. It outlined changes to reverse pre-existing US climate regulations, boosting oil and gas production, […]