A Visual History of Household Servants and Slaves
In this blog, Yale author Diane Wolfthal brings the visual representation of household workers in medieval and early-modern…
British History
Discovering King Henry III’s gold coinage – David Carpenter
David Carpenter, the author of, Henry III: The Rise to Power and Personal Rule, 1207-1258, recounts his search…
The History of Economic Sanctions as a Tool of War
Today, economic sanctions are generally regarded as an alternative to war. But for most people in the interwar…
Manners in Middle Class Early Modern England – Keith Thomas
In this extract from his book, In Pursuit of Civility, Keith Thomas looks at manners, civility and codes…
Captain Cook Lays Waste to Moorea
This extract from Frank McLynn’s, Captain Cook: Master of the Seas, describes what happened in October 1777 when,…
Christmas in Medieval England
In this extract from Going to Church in Medieval England, author Nicholas Orme discusses the customs, feasts and…
Christmas at the Country House
In this special festive blog, Yale author Clive Aslet welcomes us in to sit by a warm hearth…
The Story of Stansted Park
Architecture is about many things – building style, social change, technological advance, but also the human needs and…
Cromwell: A Killjoy Regime?
The Gunpowder Plot, the Civil Wars, Charles I’s execution, the Plague, the Great Fire, the Restoration, and then…
Marking Time: Objects in Early Modern History
During the early modern period, people’s relationship with the concept of time and their personal experience of it…
Marking Time: Objects, People & Their Lives, 1500-1800
How do we measure the days of our lives? Through more than 450 objects from an extraordinary private…
The MI9 competition: How to decipher a letter encrypted with MI9 code
Try your hand at deciphering this MI9-inspired coded letter for a chance to win Helen Fry’s books on…
The men behind MI9’s Q-gadgets: Christopher Clayton Hutton and Charles Fraser Smith
MI9’s ‘Q-gadgets’ have made it into the public imagination through the adventures of James Bond. But who was…
The Mayflower – 400th Anniversary: An extract from ‘They Knew They Were Pilgrims’
September 2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the departure from Plymouth of the ship the Mayflower which transported…
Conversations: Colonialism
The global wave of protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd reminds us that we live in…