History Day

Items

• 'You called and we came': Windrush and the NHS
  This exhibition explores the contributions that the Windrush generation to NHS, as well as the racial inequality they faced
• Commemorating D-Day: The Library Collections at IWM
  This blog will look at the commemoration of D-Day through materials held in the Imperial War Museums’ Library collection.
• Exploring Berlin as a Cold War City in IWM’s Research Room
  Blog writtern by Annabel Sheen, a second year Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD student at Imperial War Museums and the University of Bristol, who details her experience using the museum’s Research Room and archive.
• George Lansbury Archives
  Personal papers and correspondence covering many political and social issues of the early 20th century.
• H. T. Alexander: A British Officer Serving in a Newly Independent African Country
  2024 thus marks the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives 60th anniversary. In those intervening years we have gathered the personal papers of over 800 senior defence personnel, and we thought this birthday year was a great opportunity to showcase just some of the items from the collection. This blog spotlights The Archive of Major-General Henry Templer Alexander (1911-1977) from this collection.
• In the Veins
  ‘In the Veins’ resonates through time, using over a century of archive footage to shine a light onto the face of the mining heritage of Yorkshire and the North East of England. A story of hardship and hope, division and defiance, perseverance and pride; this is not a history lesson, it’s an emotional journey that digs deep into the heart of a community built on coal. Commissioned by Teesside University and produced by the Yorkshire and North East Film Archive, the film is the result of mining for archive ‘black gold’ in amateur and professional films, promotional footage and regional BBC and ITV television programming and news, totaling over 115 source films, then carefully crafting a respectful production that would represent a proud and often forgotten community. Released in 2024 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the end of the 1984/85 UK year-long coal mining strikes, the 24-minute film has been screened at film festivals, in regional libraries, museums and published on YouTube. Importantly, it has been screened in community centres and village halls in former mining communities across the North of England, many of which are still feeling the effects of the end of the mining industry. Telling the story of the coal industry, but significantly the human experience, through only archive footage and found voices in the vaults of the Yorkshire and North East Film Archive, was a massive undertaking. The 13-strong volunteer ‘community curator’ group who have lived and worked in mining communities, at the coalface, in the community, were central to ensure the film was meaningful and authentic.
• Legal narratives of the invasion of Grenada, 1983
  This blog post was written as a companion to the exhibition in the IALS Library, ‘Legal colonialism and constitutional roads to independence: Jamaica and Grenada’. This was on display until 29th November 2024.
• Lord Ronald Gower: The Life of a Queer MP
  In this series of articles Dr Martin Spychal explores the life of Lord Ronald Charles Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (MP for Sutherland from 1867-1874), shedding light on the life of a young, aristocratic queer man as he navigated his way through the world of Westminster politics.
• Memories of 1947 between Rawalpindi and Delhi. Partition told through the eyes of VN Luthra
  On May the 20th 2022, I interviewed Mr. V N Luthra, who shared his experiences of Partition in India. Mr. Luthra was born in 1935, where he lived in Bhabra Bazaar, Rawalpindi until he was twelve years old. He then made the traumatic and emotional crossing over the border from what is now present-day Pakistan to Delhi, India.
• Memories of Partition: homeland, displacement and diasporic communities, sharing their narratives
  While growing up, I can vividly recall the 1947 partition stories that my father would share with my siblings and myself. They were harrowing, emotional and yet at the same time empowering accounts of what dad and our family had to overcome.
• NHS 75: Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the National Health Service
  The history of the NHS in our collections
• Northern Ireland: Living with the Troubles
  This blog post was written by Kaili Smith and Charlotte Willsmore, Research Support Librarians at IWM London, for History Day 2023 and explores library material relating to the IWM’s exhibition Northern Ireland: Living with the Troubles (May 2023- January 2024).
• Partition Memories Exhibition
  This blog post reviews the Partition Memories exhibition at SOAS Library
• Peace and Internationalism
  This page highlights LSE Library's collections on peace and internationalism
• Resistance, Rights and Refuge: Britain and Chile 50 years after the Chilean coup
  September 2023 marks 50 years since the violent military overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected left-wing Popular Unity government. An exhibition curated by Tanya Harmer and Gloria Miqueles at LSE Library explores the importance of marking this anniversary at a time when democracy around the world is, once again, under threat.
• The Last Revolutionary? The Life,and Legacy of Thomas Wintringham (1898-1949)
  By John Concagh, the 2024 MA Modern History intern in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives
• The Radical Rhetoric of the Common Wealth Party in Political Literature, 1942-1945
  Hello, I’m John Concagh, the current MA Intern at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. Over the last few months, I’ve been working on the Archival Collection of Tom Wintringham, the radical writer, activist, politician, and Spanish Civil War Veteran. Within the collection are papers covering Common Wealth, a radical political movement he formed a key part of.
• The story of Gustavus Cornwall
  A 19th century case of criminalisation of homosexuality of Post Office's employee Gustavus Cornwall.
• The Suffrage Movement
  This blog post explores the women's suffrage movement within the Postal Museum's collections
• Two centuries on: Following the path of Hovell and Hume
• War Memoirs of a Nonentity: Creating Archives
  2024 thus marks the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives 60th anniversary. In those intervening years we have gathered the personal papers of over 800 senior defence personnel, and we thought this birthday year was a great opportunity to showcase just some of the items from the collection. This blog spotlights the Vlieland, Charles Archibald's personal memoirs “DISASTER IN THE FAR EAST 1941-2” from this collection.