Latest Posts
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The Joys of Being a Historian: Summertime in Tanzania, by Dr Heike I. Schmidt
Part I I knew exactly what I was doing. I planned my fieldwork to utter perfection. After all I was an experienced postdoc, having spent about three years living in Zimbabwe while studying and researching the country’s past. Now working… Continue reading
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Marrows Over Maths: The history of England’s school harvest camps, by Tamisan Latherow
There are certain images from the mass media that, as a child of the 1980s growing up in America, are ubiquitous to summer for me. The 1961 Disney film, The Parent Trap, staring Hayley Mills is one of them. Mills,… Continue reading
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How did a fear of climate lead to a climate of fear in which demonic witchcraft loomed large? Professor Helen Parish explores the connections between weather, witchcraft, faith, fears, and the human imagination…
In the first blog in this summer series, my colleague Ruth Salter invited us to hang up our umbrellas and celebrate the role played by St Swithin in our summer weather. While Ruth encouraged us to turn our eyes to… Continue reading
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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
READING HISTORY 