History Day

Items

• 'Queering the narrative' in the archival records at Bethlem Museum of the Mind
  Looking at the possibilities and perils of investigating same-sex attraction in the historic records of psychiatry.
• '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
• 125 years of The King's Fund: a timeline
  This timeline documents the history of the King's Fund since it was established in 1897
• 19th century Post Office workers records go live on the Addressing Health website
  This page introduces the Addressing Health Data Mapper project which offers unique insights into the health and working lives of workers in the 19th and 20th centuries
• 80 years on: the V weapon attacks on Britain
  This blog will look at how V1 and V2 rockets were used against British soil eighty years ago and their impact on local communities and ordinary people’s lives.
• A brief history of national postal strikes
  This blog post explores the history of the UK's most impactful postal strikes
• Absolute Units: 'Queer Rural Lives: Searching the Archives' with Tim Jerrome
  Queer histories of England have predominantly focused on the country's urban centres and cities - especially London. Yet queer and same-sex relationships have always existed throughout English life. Rural England is no exception. In the first of two podcasts, Joe and Ollie welcome onto Absolute Units former MERL colleague Tim Jerrome (University of Brighton), whose PhD explores the history of same-sex relationships in rural England. Learn about the challenges of finding queer histories in farm archives, the issues of archivist objectivity, and how museums can develop their practices to better surface and represent stories and relationships that were hidden in the past. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Themetune by Tai Dawson. Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan Producer: Joe Vaughan
• AGRA Video
  Discover more about AGRA. Who has are we and what we do.
• AIDS Social History
  This research group documented the history of the disease as it happened and aimed to capture the response of policy makers and charity organisations to the virus. The papers consist of reports and analysis of strategies and policies covering actions of European countries as well as the UK
• All work and all play: unconventional sciences at the Warburg Library
  This blog post was written by Kella Lawrinson and Simone Monti, Graduate Library Trainees at the Warburg Institute as part of a series of posts on the theme of ‘Human Discovery: Experiencing Science’ for History Day 2022.
• An ordinary life': The King's Fund's work on services for disabled people
  This exhibition explores how the King's Fund has worked with, and for, disabled people over the years
• Antinous in the collection of the Institute of Classical Studies Library
  The blog discusses the books that have been published on Antinous, the lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian
• Art, life, love : narratives from the Benedict Nicolson Archive
  Benedict Nicolson (1914-1978) was an art historian and editor of the Burlington Magazine for nearly forty years. Born into an aristocratic but also liberal and bohemian family, and coming of age in the tumultuous interwar period, he encountered unprecedented opportunities and experiences. This display explores Nicolson’s extraordinary life through his archive. Created almost exclusively in a personal capacity, and documenting Nicolson’s relationships with both men and women, the material presents an incredible resource for the study of art history, social history and the history of gender, sex and sexualities.
• Auction Catalogues in the Paul Mellon Centre Library
  The library holds approximately 15,000 auction catalogues, mainly dating from the late nineteenth century onwards, but with some eighteenth and early nineteenth century sales.
• Autograph Letter Collection
  An extraordinary collection of letters to Women’s Service Library (now The Women’s Library) of prominent correspondents dating from 1851 to 1975.
• Autumn in the Archives!
  As History Day takes place during November, let’s explore some archival collections around the theme of ‘Autumn’!
• Book review: The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
  Archivist Kate Bond reviews a classic group biography of 18th-century scientists like William and Caroline Herschel, whose working papers are held in the RAS Archive
• Brian Sewell : an introduction to the archive
  Brian Sewell (1931-2015) was an art historian, art critic, author and media personality. He lead a remarkable life: born in 1931 to a single mother, he studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art and found fame both as Anthony Blunt’s unofficial spokesman following Blunt’s exposure as a Soviet spy and later in his role as daily arts correspondent for the Evening Standard. All his life he felt like an ‘outsider’ – this becoming the title of his published autobiographies – a reference to various aspects of his character and also his sexuality (he described himself as gay). This Sewell Archive, documents almost every part of his life and this display provides an introduction to the collection.
• British LGBTQ+ History Podcast Series, 1800 - Present Day
  This podcast series, produced by the Historical Association, focuses on UK LGBTQ+ history from 1800 until the present day. Episodes feature Dr Matt Cook and Dr Sean Brady of Birkbeck, University of London, Professor Sally R Munt of the University of Sussex and Dr Emma Vickers of the University of Reading.
• Cataloguing 18th and 19th Century Music Scores
  Emma Poole, Library Assistant, writes about her experience cataloguing rare and historical music items.
• Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Churchill Archives Centre
  In this online exhibition, we explore the people and events that have shaped our history.
• Centre for Sexual and Reproductive Health
  Mixed media archive collection relating to European Commission project, Concerted Action: Assessing AIDS Prevention Strategies (1988 -1991), and follow-up projects, the aim of which was to provide an overview of the different HIV/AIDS prevention activities. Collection includes 734 posters and 6 boxes of ephemera.
• Churchill Archives Centre History Day 2021 podcast: the urban environment
  In this special History Day 2021 podcast, we delve into our social science collections here at Churchill Archives Centre to explore what they can tell us about the urban environment in 1950s London.
• Constance Maynard's Diaries and Unpublished Autobiography Online
  Constance Maynard, the first Principal of Westfield College, kept confessional and detailed diaries about her life 1866-1935 and these are now available online. She also reflected back on her life 1849-1927 in the 1930s in an unpublished autobiography made available for the first time online. Both are rich sources for the inner life of a queer woman from 1840s-1930s, history of women in higher education and the relationship with faith and sexuality.
• Damaged & Destroyed : Three Stories of Preservation and Loss from the PMC’s Photographic Archive
  In 2021, the Paul Mellon Centre (PMC) published its photographic archive online. The archive comprises more than 100,000 reproductions of paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures. The photographs, which were taken over a forty-year period between the early 1960s to the late 1990s, offer images of objects from across six centuries, and focus in particular on sixteenth- to nineteenth-century British art. This feature focuses on a selection of the damaged and destroyed works that are recorded in the Centre’s photographic archive, and uses them to suggest some of the values and limitations of such archives. It takes the form of three stories. The first offers a glimpse into the work and tragic life of the largely forgotten eighteenth-century artist Hugh Robinson; the second looks at four portraits of women associated with a titled Scottish family, the Rothes, which were totally destroyed during a high-profile warehouse fire in 1997; and the third looks at a damaged sketchbook by the nomadic Georgian artist George Chinnery.