IHR Shorts

Writing history is an art and a craft. This handbook supports research students and independent scholars by showing how the historical profession works and how to participate in its vibrant community of scholars. It outlines techniques to help design large-scale research projects, demonstrates the difference between quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and provides advice on bringing projects to a positive conclusion. This friendly guide is frank about the pains and pleasures of sticking with a long-term project, and explains how to present original research to wider...

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) was one of the earliest and strongest critics of what he saw as the British government’s attempts to control the past through the writing of so-called, ‘official histories’. His famous diatribe against the 'pitfalls' of government-mandated history first appeared in 1949, at a time when the British government was engaged in publishing official histories and diplomatic documents on an unprecedented scale following the Second World War. But why was Butterfield so hostile to official history, and why do his views still matter today?

Written by one of...

European Religious Cultures is a set of stimulating essays first written as offerings for Christopher Brooke on his eightieth birthday. They are now gathered for the enjoyment of all those interested in the history of religious cultures. They address a variety of practices in religious life - among them pilgrimage and the urban cult of saints, the monastic performance of liturgy, the choice to enter the priesthood - and situate them within the life-cycles and social relations of medieval Europeans. The authors have been inspired by Christopher Brooke's own interests over a...

The 2018 Kehoe Lecture in Irish History: presented on 15 November 2018 at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Professor Senia Pašeta argues that our understanding of modern Irish and British politics would be enormously enriched if we recognized two things: that the Irish and British suffrage movements were deeply connected; and that the women’s suffrage movement across the United Kingdom was shaped in fundamental ways by the Irish Question from the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth.

As Professor Pašeta demonstrates, the...

This book examines the history and influence of Magna Carta in British and American history. In a series of essays written by notable British specialists, it considers the origins of the document in the political and religious contexts of the thirteenth century, the relevance of its principles to the seventeenth century disputes that led to the Civil War, the uses made of Magna Carta to justify the American Revolution, and its inspiration of the radical-democratic movement in Britain in the early nineteenth century.

The introductory essay considers the celebration of Magna...

The campaigns in universities across the world to reject, rename and remove historic benefactions have brought the present into collision with the past. In Britain the attempt to remove a statue of one of Oxford’s most famous benefactors, the imperialist Cecil Rhodes, has spread to other universities and their benefactors, and now also affects civic monuments and statues in towns and cities across the country. In the United States, memorials to leaders of the Confederacy in the American Civil War and to other slaveholders have been the subject of intense dispute. Should we continue to...