History and the state: supporting institutional memory or challenging national myths?. Several historians' essays addressing this issue of particular present relevance.
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And on something that is not perhaps quite perpetuating national myth, but is still, perhaps, trying to fudge a dreadful record: ‘A Dark, Difficult, and Shameful Chapter’: Dr ( Read more... )

Well, yay for the British Academy, what: Historian David Olusoga awarded President’s Medal: The writer and broadcaster has brought diverse stories from Britain’s past to a wider audience: Olusoga, a writer, broadcaster and film-maker, best known as the author of Black and British: A Forgotten History, is the 39th person to be given the President’s ( Read more... )

This piece is about weird enough people to begin with (and I mean the people who think they're the rightwise ruler of Some Island in the South Seas by Mysterious Divine Right): ‘There was a prophecy I would come’: the western men who think they are South Pacific kings : The fantasy of being revered by people on the far side of the world is an old ( Read more... )

One of the things that I found a bit puzzling from the outset about this was, my expectation of Naomi Mitchison and historical fiction is that she is not going for the Expected Big Important Events that everybody has done and will go on doing, but does the interstices and marginalised characters between what Sellars and Yeatman would deem the ( Read more... )

This is depressing: The Brink of Erasure. Way back in the late 70s, when I visited the National Archives of India as a professional archivist employed at an institution to whom one might have supposed they would extend a certain mutual courtesy, I wasn't even allowed to look at the finding aids without having applied, like, months in advance, when ( Read more... )

Radical Object: Fergusson Vaginal Speculum: The speculum is associated with racialised and state-sponsored gynaecological violence through the work of Marion Sims and the Contagious Diseases Acts and through instances of compulsory inspections of incarcerated women in recent times. But, the duck billed version was also allied to liberatory ( Read more... )

I daresay all dr rdrz have already gone on to the 'buying the t-shirt' stage of the Jane Austen's House addresses the question of 'her connections to slavery and its mention in her novels': as if this has not been being addressed by Austen scholarship for lo, this considerable time.
Dan Hicks, Decolonising museums isn’t part of a ‘culture war’. It’ ( Read more... )

The story one usually encounters on these shores is that the hedgehog is a threatened and endangered native species: Hedgehogs are one of the nation’s favourite species, yet there’s been a worrying nationwide decline in hedgehog numbers over the last 25 years. The Regent’s Park is now the only central London Royal Park with a breeding population. ( Read more... )

This comes top because, wow, triumph of commonsense, how is it that this can be? National Trust report on slavery links did not break charity law, regulator says. The National Trust did not breach charity law by publishing a report that found itself at the centre of a “culture war” after it made links between its country house properties and the UK ( Read more... )

Barely has the Wallace Collection had a reprieve, than this comes down the turnpike: Vast cuts at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) are feared to be imminent, with curators and conservators in the line of fire “The selection of those people was made by three individuals who don’t have any curatorial or conservation experience, the head of human ( Read more... )