Category: Archive

  • What Not to Wear: The Importance of Women’s Fashion in the Eighteenth Century and Today

    What Not to Wear: The Importance of Women’s Fashion in the Eighteenth Century and Today

    By Matilda Embling Women and fashion are often explicitly linked. One only has to consider the media coverage of the new Duchess of Sussex to uncover how frequently a woman’s identity is equated to, or even entirely subsumed by, the clothing she wears. In a recent Guardian article , the more conservative muted wardrobe she…

  • Breaking down barriers: are political thought history and public history irreconcilable?

    Breaking down barriers: are political thought history and public history irreconcilable?

    By Zoe Alipranti (@ZAlipranti) Making historical subjects accessible to a wider audience is an important part of public history. Some public history writers target readers seeking to escape everyday life by immersing themselves in the fascinating stories of the past. Works on the history of political thought might not be an obvious choice here. Tales of medieval chivalry,…

  • Hay fever: An irritating history

    Hay fever: An irritating history

     By Carys Brown (@HistoryCarys) ‘About the beginning or middle of June in every year the following symptoms make their appearance, with a greater or less degree of violence. A sensation of heat and fulness is experienced in the eyes…until the sensation becomes converted into what may be characterized as a combination of the most acute…

  • A tale of two cultures: a historian’s guide to Bolzano

    A tale of two cultures: a historian’s guide to Bolzano

    By Zoe Farrell (@zoeffarrell) As part of my research fieldwork this year, I was lucky enough to be able to visit the city of Bolzano in Northern Italy. This South-Tyrolean city provides a perfect example of how small, provincial cities often have rich and diverse histories which make them prime points of study for enquiries…

  • The Great British Summer? A Historical Heatwave

    The Great British Summer? A Historical Heatwave

    By Helen Sunderland (@hl_sunderland)  ‘The Weather for some Days past is said by the Curious in such Observations, to have been several Degrees hotter than for these four Years past.’[1] As I write this piece under another cloudless Cambridge sky with temperatures soaring well into the high twenties, this July 1757 report from the London…