Latest Posts
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‘Can You See the Real Me’: Bank Holidays and Quadrophenia, by Professor Matthew Worley
August Bank Holiday means it’s time for my annual viewing of Quadrophenia (1979), the film built around The Who’s 1973 LP of the same name. Jimmy, a young mod from London, prepares for a beano in Brighton, travelling to the… Continue reading
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Summer Weather and Winchester’s Patron Saint, by Ruth J. Salter
If you are anything like me you will be thinking that after what felt like a prolonged grey, cold winter it feels like we should’ve turned a corner into summer. I suppose it’s mild at least and that’s almost enough… Continue reading
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For better or worse? The impact of the railways upon Berkshire, by Richard Marks
On the 30th March 1840, Reading would change forever. The Great Western Railway (GWR) had arrived. The original station opened as a temporary terminus on Brunel’s main line to Bristol followed quickly by the completion of the line throughout, a… Continue reading
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“Deference or drudgery? The census, community, and Berkshire servant life”, by Peter Jolly for Local and Community History Month
Undertaking a demographic study of Berkshire domestic service has opened my eyes to how distinctive and varied were communities within the historic county at the turn of the twentieth century. Given the impossibility of analysing all 15,000 county female servants, I… Continue reading
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Shulie, and the place of the feminist past in the feminist present, by Dr Natalie Thomlinson
‘Sex class is so deep as to be invisible.’ So begins American feminist Shulamith Firestone’s 1970 global blockbuster The Dialectic of Sex. I remember vividly the first time I read it as an undergraduate: I’d certainly encountered feminist texts before, but none… Continue reading
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Why the Greenham Common peace camp needs to be remembered 40 years after its inception, by James Watts
Amidst the disruption and uncertainty that we have started the year with, 2021 marks both the 40th anniversary of the inception of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and the 30th anniversary of the final US cruise missiles leaving Greenham… Continue reading
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Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp’s Lynette Edwell, interviewed by Amy Longmuir and James Watts for Women’s History Month
As part of our #GlobalGreenham40 campaign, we are delighted to have been given the opportunity to speak with Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and Cruisewatch activist Lynette Edwell about her involvement in the movement and the importance of being a… Continue reading
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Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp’s international ‘web’ and the anti-nuclear movement, by Amy Longmuir
The history of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp near Newbury, Berkshire has been well documented in popular history and the media to narrate the development of the camp as an important element of the nuclear disarmament movement. Missing from this,… Continue reading
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Christmas Cancelled? Nothing is new, ask the puritans of 1647 by Dr Rachel Foxley
In 2020 we are approaching Christmas with warnings ringing in our ears, as well as encouragement to celebrate – and that’s just from the Prime Minister, whose characteristically mixed messaging tells us to be jolly, but also to ‘be jolly… Continue reading
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Dreaming of a White Christmas? It may all be in the stars! by Professor Anne Lawrence
Recent forecasts and news stories have raised hopes of a white Christmas, even though the Met Office has pointed out that there has only been a widespread covering of snow on Christmas Day in the UK four times in the… Continue reading
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