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History on Film: genre, fact, and resonance in Mary Queen of Scots and The Favourite
By Laura Flannigan (@LFlannigan17) Within the first month of 2019, historians were treated to not one but two blockbuster movies: The Favourite (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) and Mary Queen of Scots (dir. Josie Rourke). Both grossed millions of dollars in the short time since their worldwide release, reminding us that film is by far the most accessible form of…
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Ghettoes to Gentrification: How Hollywood Shaped America’s Urban Imagination
By Sam Collings-Wells (@Sam_cw_) ‘And they hide their faces / And they hide their eyes / Cause the city is dyin’/ And they don’t know why’. These lyrics from Randy Newman’s 1977 ‘Baltimore’—later made famous by Nina Simone’s justly celebrated cover—perfectly captured the spirit urban life during the mid-1970s. Historians would later pinpoint the variety…
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Film archives: using moving images as historical sources
By Max Long My first encounter with moving image archives took place in a windowless room in the basement of a building in London. I was there to view a selection of natural history films. I had watched similar films online, but here I could load, spool, and wind up the films myself. Films are…
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The Dreyfus Affair: metaphor and reality in public history
By Daniel Adamson (@DEAdamson9) The Pyrrhic Wars; the crossing of the Rubicon; the witch hunts; the sinking of the Titanic. Modern parlance is littered with examples of historical events that have accrued a metaphorical value superior to the weight of their historical realities. In public spheres, there is more interest in deploying historical events for…
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19. A Statue of Queen Anne
By Emily Rhodes (@elrhodes96) Presiding over the library in Blenheim Palace, the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough, is a marble statue of Queen Anne, carved by Flemish sculptor John Michael Rysbrack. The inscription dedicates the statue to the monarch, thanking her for the gift of land and funds which enabled the building of the…
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