By Kerry Lindeque Feeling a bit battered by wind and rain, me and my housemate Caitlin ascended the peak of Kinder Scout, the highest point in the Peak District. We looked out across craggy rocks for the famed view of the national park’s hills and plateaus, but instead saw nothing but pure white mist. Straining …
By Lois Joynt Modern day Britain is a beautiful hodgepodge of cultures and characters; but modern day Britain lies on the dirty bed of its past. The sheets are neglected, the pillows muddied and sullen, in a desperate pit of forgotten-truths. And yet, so much of our present is reliant on our past, so much …
By Bea O’Keefe The fall of the Berlin Wall, which divided East from West, on the 9th of November 1989 is one of the most impactful and moving events of the last 35 years in European history; five million people gathered in Berlin to celebrate this moment. The border was accidentally opened due to a …
By Cath H Kennedy The English have been famous through the ages for their binge drinking, but when the government tried deregulating the beer supply to working-class areas, as a means to stem demand for gin in 1830, they badly miscalculated. Accounts of the resulting disorder suggest that the worst Saturday night brawl today would …
By Josh Evans In the famous account Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup says “if ye wish to look upon the celerity, if not the poetry of motion upon genuine happiness, rampant and unrestrained – go down to Louisiana and see the slaves dancing in the starlight of a Christmas night.” Now, celebration is certainly …
By Hannah McCann Every year on 21st December the tallest stone at Stonehenge lines up with the rising sun. The midwinter solstice would have been a very important day for Neolithic people. Archaeological evidence from around Stonehenge shows us that they had immense feasts – from pork and beef to mead made from honey. They …
By Hannah McCann There seems to be an incorrect assumption within the LGBTQ+ community that before the Stonewall riots in the summer of 1969, queer individuals lived in secrecy. However, we only have to turn to the vibrant night-life of 1920’s Berlin and the pioneering work of the Institute of Sex Research to uncover a …
By Arran Bostock In light of the confusing and unpredictable times we find ourselves in, it seems appropriate to look back at an epidemic which primarily affected the LGBT+ community – a societal group who endured hardships through the oppressive discriminatory laws and attitudes embedded in the twentieth century. The AIDS/HIV epidemic remains one of …
By Hannah McCann In light of the events that took place during this summer in regards to the Black Lives Matter movement, historians have been forced to reflect on their approach to history. Undoubtedly, racism within the academic field has caused people of colour to be excluded from the narrative. With this in mind, I …
By Mya Badhan Historians agree that the dawn of modernity led to a rise in genocide, but there is disagreement on which causes were the primary galvaniser in mass violence. The debate can be categorised into two sections, that twentieth century genocide was caused by colonialism or genocide was driven by postcolonial nation building. I …
