-
In praise of grandmothers (and oral histories)
By Louise Moschetta @LouiseMoschetta I’m not entirely sure whether I owe my interest in history to my grandmother but she certainly helped. Her house, which until very recently she still lived in, was built in 1972 and hasn’t changed much since. Walking through it has almost always been, with certain exceptions such as an ever larger…
-
Wanted: A More Complicated History of Belgium’s Congolese ‘Heart of Darkness’
by Eva Schalbroeck Whenever I say that I study the history of Belgian imperialism in the Congo, most people confess to not knowing that Belgium had a colony. Others describe it as a particularly nasty and violent episode’. My explanations of ‘it’s far less black-and-white’ or ‘it’s complicated’ often confuse more than they illuminate. Popular media…
-
Editorial: DHP’s top historical novels
-
The Public House – the struggle to find privacy in the eighteenth century home
By Alex Wakelam – @A_Wakelam Around two o’clock in the morning of February 15th 1732, Robert Atkinson, a sadler, returned home drunk from the alehouse. His mother Ann Atkinson, having sent the maid to bed at midnight, had sat up to wait for him so that she could lock the door behind him (the symbolic ending of the…
-
From nose in a book to nose in the kitchen – musings on the place of historians in recipe recreation
by Elly Barnett – @eleanorrbarnett When I explain that I am researching the links between food and the European Reformations, I am usually met with premature praise for my (in reality non-existent) cooking skills. The obvious location in which to research food, they assume, is the kitchen. The cooking of historical recipes, moreover, has gained much public…
doinghistoryinpublic.org 