IHR Conference Series

Pieter Geyl (1887—1966) was undoubtedly one of the most internationally renowned Dutch historians of the twentieth century, but also one of the most controversial. Having come to the UK as a journalist, he started his academic career at the University of London in the aftermath of World War I (1919) and played an important role in the early days of the Institute of Historical Research. Known in this time for his re-interpretation of the sixteenth-century Dutch Revolt against the Habsburgs, that challenged existing historiographies of both Belgium and the Netherlands but was also linked...

An extraordinary court with late medieval roots in the activities of the king’s council, Star Chamber came into its own over the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, before being abolished in 1641 by members of parliament for what they deemed egregious abuses of royal power. Before its demise, the court heard a wide range of disputes in cases framed as fraud, libel, riot, and more. In so doing, it produced records of a sort that make its archive invaluable to many researchers today for insights into both the ordinary and extraordinary.

The chapters gathered here explore...

The history of childhood and welfare in Britain through the eyes of children. Children’s Experiences of Welfare in Modern Britain brings together the latest research as provided by the state, charities and families from 1830 to 1980. Demonstrating how the young were integral to the making, interpretation, delivery and impact of welfare services, the chapters consider a wide range of investments in young people’s lives, including residential institutions, emigration schemes, hospitals and clinics, schools, social housing and familial care. Drawing upon thousands of personal...

The Creighton Century, 1907–2007 offers a selection of ten lectures from the first 100 years of the University of London’s prestigious Creighton Lecture series. Each of the chosen lectures, delivered between 1913 and 2004, is introduced and set in context by a historian of the modern-day University. The collection also includes, and is introduced by, Robert Evans’s 2007 centenary lecture, ‘The Creighton century: British historians and Europe, 1907–2007’.

This volume provides a fascinating insight into the development of the discipline of history over the twentieth...

Medieval Londoners were a diverse group, some born in the city, and others drawn to the capital from across the realm and from overseas. For some, London became the sole focus of their lives, while others retained or developed networks and loyalties that spread far and wide. The rich evidence for the medieval city, including archaeological and documentary evidence, means that the study of London and its inhabitants remains an active field. Medieval Londoners brings together archaeologists, historians, art historians and literary scholars whose essays provide glimpses of medieval...

How is emptiness made and what historical purpose does it serve? What cultural, material and natural work goes into maintaining ‘nothingness’? Why have a variety of historical actors, from colonial powers to artists and urban dwellers, sought to construct, control and maintain (physically and discursively) empty space, and by which processes is emptiness discovered, visualised and reimagined?

This volume draws together contributions from authors working on landscapes and rurality, along with national and imperial narratives, from Brazil to Russia and Ireland. It considers the...

Thomas Frederick Tout (1855–1929) was arguably the most prolific English medieval historian of the early twentieth century. The son of an unsuccessful publican, he was described at his Oxford scholarship exam as ‘uncouth and untidy’; however he went on to publish hundreds of books throughout his distinguished career with a legacy that extended well beyond the academy. Tout pioneered the use of archival research, welcomed women into academia and augmented the University of Manchester’s growing reputation for pioneering research.

This book presents the first full assessment of...

This collection addresses the concept of gender in the middle ages through the study of place and space, exploring how gender and space may be mutually constructive and how individuals and communities make and are made by the places and spaces they inhabit.

From womb to tomb, how are we defined and confined by gender and by space? Interrogating the thresholds between sacred and secular, public and private, enclosure and exposure, domestic and political, movement and stasis, the essays in this interdisciplinary collection draw on current research and contemporary theory to...

This volume is based on two international conferences held in 2013 and 2014 at Ariano Irpino, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. It contains essays by leading scholars in the field. Like the conferences, the volume seeks to enhance interdisciplinary and international dialogue between those who work on the Normans and their conquests in northern and southern Europe in an original way.

This collection has as its central theme issues related to cultural transfer, treated as being of a pan-European kind across the societies that the Normans conquered and as occurring within the...

This volume contains selected essays in celebration of the scholarship of the medieval historian Professor James L. Bolton. The essays address a number of different questions in medieval economic and social history, as the volume looks at the activities of merchants, their trade, legal interactions and identities, and on the importance of money and credit in the rural and urban economies. Other essays look more widely at patterns of immigration  to London, trade and royal policy, and the role that merchants played in the Hundred Years War.

Published as part of the 

In the long-debated transition from late antiquity to the early middle ages, the city of Ravenna presents a story rich and strange. From the fourth century onwards it suffered decline in economic terms. Yet its geographical position, its status as an imperial capital, and above all its role as a connecting-point between East and West, ensured that it remained an intermittent attraction for early medieval kings and emperors throughout the period from the late fifth to the eleventh century.

Ravenna’s story is all the more interesting because it was complicated and unpredictable:...

In January 2015, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the most extraordinary and heroic figure ever to be closely and directly associated with it, the University of Bristol arranged and hosted a series of public lectures.

The historian David Cannadine was invited to speak on one aspect of it, which had a particular local appeal and domestic resonance, namely Churchill's long years and his diverse activities as Chancellor of the University, extending from 1929 until 1965. Not only was Churchill the most illustrious and the most...

This volume reassesses the life and work of Octavia Hill, housing reformer, open space campaigner, co-founder of the National Trust, founder of the Army Cadet Force, and the first woman to be invited to sit on a royal commission. In her lifetime, if not a household name, Octavia Hill was widely regarded as an authority on a broad range of acknowledged social problems, particularly housing and poverty. Yet despite her early pre-eminence, subsequent attempts by family members to keep her memory alive, and the remarkable success of the institutions which she helped to found, Hill fell from...

Healthcare in Ireland and Britain explores developments in health and social care in Ireland and Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The central objectives are to highlight the role of voluntarism in healthcare, to examine healthcare in local and regional contexts, and to provide comparative perspectives.

The collection is based on two interconnected and overlapping research themes: voluntarism and healthcare, and regionalism/localism and healthcare. It includes two synoptic overviews by leading authorities in the field, and ten case studies focusing...

This book examines, for the first time, the history of the social, cultural, political and economic presence of the French in London, and explores the multiple ways in which this presence has contributed to the life of the city.

The capital has often provided a place of refuge, from the Huguenots in the 17th century, through the period of the French Revolution, to various exile communities during the 19th century, and on to the Free French in the Second World War. It also considers the generation of French citizens who settled in post-war London, and goes on to provide insights...

The chapters in this volume celebrate the work of Pauline Stafford, highlighting the ways in which it has advanced research in the fields of both Anglo-Saxon history and the history of medieval women and gender. Ranging across the period, and over much of the old Carolingian world as well as Anglo-Saxon England, they deal with such questions as the nature of kingship and queenship, fatherhood, elite gender relations, the transmission of property, the participation of women in lordship, slavery and warfare, and the nature of assemblies. Gender and historiography presents the fruits of...

This fascinating new volume brings together seventeen authors from across disciplines to offer a detailed and comprehensive history of the European city. Dedicated to the late Derek Keene (1942-2021), the forefather of urban history, this book helps us better understand the development, role and allure of the metropolis throughout history, from medieval times to the 20^th century. The chapters offered posit the city as a centre for innovation and political might juxtaposed against a sprawling, diverse community in constant flux. Therein we visit the high and lows of city...

'She said she was in the family way' examines the subject of pregnancy and infancy in Ireland from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. It draws on exciting and innovative research by early-career and established academics, and consider topics that have been largely ignored by historians in Ireland. The book makes an important contribution to Irish women’s history, family history, childhood history, social history, crime history and medical history, and will provide a reference point for academics interested in themes of sexuality, childbirth, infanthood and parenthood.

After the First World War, Britain faced a number of challenges as it sought to adapt to domestic conditions of mass democracy whilst maintaining its position in the empire in the face of national independence movements. As politicians at home and abroad sought to legitimise their position, new efforts were made to conceptualise nationality and citizenship, with attempts to engage the public using mass media and greater emphasis on governing in the public interest.

Brave New World reappraises the domestic and imperial history of Britain in the inter-war period,...