Blogs about History

That's right... ... I'm going on a research trip... ... to the UK! (I suppose this post should technically be called Archivwochen, but that's a little too pedantic even for me.) It's been nearly a …

Well, in New Orleans, anyway. My son Amos alerted me to this item, which he found on Reddit, whatever that is.Of course, I immediately began searching for more information. This item does appear in the …

October 3 – December 13, 1519 By 1519, a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was, if not quite routine, no longer a black art either. There was an established set of best practices to follow. …

The remains of The Cluniac Priory of Our Lady of Thetford The Cluniac Priory of Our Lady, Thetford, was first founded on the Suffolk side of the Little Ouse river by Roger Bigod in the …

The long awaited discussion between Graham Hancock and archaeologist Flint Dibble on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast is now available. Here are my thoughts after listening to the whole four and a half hour thing, …

Ladderback chairs designed in 1903 by architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) for Glasgow Willow Tea-rooms came on the London market in 2014, and put me in mind of Glasgow businesswoman Kate Cranston (1849–1934). Kate Cranston …

This popular annual event returns to KCL on 17th May 2024. This one day event features a range of papers of original research in all areas of film culture in Britain and areas affected by …

Just a quick post as we move towards the summer. The podcast goes on with me and Chris recently talking about fairy artifacts, the Philip experiment (‘how to invent a ghost’) and this month ‘spectral …

Just dreaming about a possible summer project...Girl's Boots, c.1850 from LACMA.The description says they're made of wool sateen, bound in cotton tape, with leather soles. I wish they had an image of the back heel …

HISTORY OF MOTHER’S DAY The person who initially was most active in opposing the celebration of Mother’s Day is the very person who started this holiday in the US. How did that happen? Anna Jarvis’ …

Many apologies to subscribers who received a notification of a new post earlier today. Unfortunately this was an error on my part. I was working on an upcoming essay and managed to hit the “publish” …

My interest in linen armour lead me to texts from around the year 1000. Chrétien de Troyes died leaving one of his works incomplete, and sometime around 1190 to 1210, someone wrote the first surviving …

The Newberry Library in Chicago is hosting a Digital Humanities workshop on Frederick Douglass during Black History Month. Undergraduate and graduate students in History at Northern Illinois University may be interested in participating in this …

This week at The Archive we are delighted to welcome brand new Scottish sports paper the Sporting Post to our collection, as we welcome a whopping 417,546 brand new pages in total. Meanwhile, from Belfast …

This week, in part as a follow-on to our series on the contest between Hellenistic armies and Roman legions, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about Alexander III, who you almost certainly know …

(Lord’s day) I walked in the morning towards Westminster, and seeing many people at York House, I went down and found them at mass, it being the Spanish ambassodors; and so I go into one …

This post was inspired by the Turba philosophorum lecture on the 4th Feb 2022 An athanor is an alchemical furnace, but what exactly does it mean in practise? And I really do mean practise because …

For this post, I am going to wander into the world of crime in the late eighteenth century, and the grisly fate that befell many who committed the heinous crime of highway robbery. (Full disclosure: …

In Our Name: Royal Letters, Power and Diplomacy in Scotland and England (1513-1542) Performing and Resisting Power in Early Modern Life Plate 1 from Thomas May, Arbitrary government displayed to the life, 1690. Image from …