Tag: British history

  • Cherish Watton – Historian Highlight

    Cherish Watton – Historian Highlight

    Cherish Watton, interviewed by Alex White Historian Highlight is an ongoing series sharing the research experiences of historians in the History Faculty in Cambridge. We ask students how they came to research their topic, their favourite archival find, as well as the best (and worst) advice they’ve received as academics in training. History is all…

  • The Unbearable Failure of Looking

    The Unbearable Failure of Looking

    By Ivana Dizdar (@ivana_dizdar) An Arctic seascape. A shipwreck. Polar bears devouring human flesh. This is the scene British artist Edwin Landseer depicts in his 1864 painting Man Proposes, God Disposes. The action takes place within a landscape of glaciers and ice: cold, hard, and jagged. The environment is inhospitable and threatening, just like the feast…

  • 20. A Statue of Pacific on Dacres Estate

    20. A Statue of Pacific on Dacres Estate

    By Zac Lewis On Dacres Estate in South-East London, you can find a statue of the ancient god Pacific sitting lounged back, draped in a greying toga on a red brick plinth above the pavement. The statue is chipped and rainswept, set in from the street beside a set of garages, and its eyes are…

  • 22. The Centenary British Commemorative Medallion Representing Britain’s Capture of Trinidad from the Spanish

    22. The Centenary British Commemorative Medallion Representing Britain’s Capture of Trinidad from the Spanish

    By Aileen Alexis The year 1797 signalled a watershed moment in the colonial history of Trinidad. Before that year, Trinidad was under the rule of the Spanish Crown, England’s newest enemy. Trinidad became a pawn in European rivalries that brought General Abercromby to the shores of Trinidad that year. This would mark the beginning of…

  • 12. A Monument to the Great Fire of London

    12. A Monument to the Great Fire of London

    By Zoë Jackson (@ZoeMJackson1) If you have ever disembarked off the London Tube at Monument, you have probably walked past the memorial from which the station gets its name. This 202-foot (61 metres) high column was built to memorialise the 1666 Great Fire of London, which destroyed thousands of houses and numerous churches in central…