A review of Tim Hitchcock’s and Robert Shoemaker’s book London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800.

A response to criticism of Adam Curtis’ documentary film Bitter Lake about the war in Afghanistan. I argue that Curtis is a practitioner of ‘thick description’ and is pioneering a new form of history through the use of audio-visual archives.

An overview of the local history collection in the University of Leicester Library, one of the largest in the U.K. Includes a focus on poll books as a source.

There are now several open access book publishers using consortia funding models. But library staff on the ground are not always enthusiastic about re-purposing budgets to fund open access books. This post explores the sources of this scepticism.

On November 2, 1816, Charles Repeat, “a poor old man”, was driving his master’s cart along the short route between Hobart and New Town in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). He accidentally drove over a small tree stump, and was thrown from the cart and killed immediately.

In our first blog post of the year, Dr Imogen Wegman provides a guide to tour guiding. Imogen, who recently completed her PhD in History at the University of Tasmania, talks about the joys and frustrations of leading tour groups, explains how it can improve your skills as a scholar and communicator, and shares some selections from her collection…[Read more]

William Farrell talks to historian Tim Hitchcock about the origins of the welfare state and its influence on contemporary political narratives.

Review of Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth-Century Household The World of Alice Le Strange, (review no. 1358)
https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1358

This essay engages the Popular Anthropocene and offers an alternative to its “Man” and “Nature” perspective: the Capitalocene.

The use of drawing as a research method in local history.

The first PhD thesis awarded to a student in the Centre for English Local History: L. A. Parker’s Enclosure in Leicestershire, 1485-1607 (1948).

Books and pamphlets relating to the Peterloo massacre, held by the University of Leicester Library.

Does current open access policy work for local studies publishing and library collections?

The works of Gavin Stamp (1948 – 2017), writer and historian of architecture, held in the David Wilson Library at the University of Leicester.