This week the third year students studying module HIS3037, The Wars of the Roses, had the opportunity for a field trip to nearby Delapre Abbey, which as well as being a lovely stately home with pretty grounds is also very probably the site of the Battle of Northampton, a significant battle during the Wars of the Roses as Henry VI was captured at the end of it and taken into custody.

Graham talking to the students at Delapre – we were blessed with a lovely autumn day!

We were joined by Graham Evans, Chair of the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society, who was able to give us a very interesting guided tour of the battlefield site. While I am an expert in the fifteenth century I am quite happy to admit that military specifics are not my thing, and so was absolutely delighted that Graham agreed to join us and give the students (and me!) a very helpful overview of how the battle would have played out. He was also able to talk about the process of writing the new information boards that are now featured on the site, making the battlefield more accessible to the public (because let’s be honest, without some professional insights a battlefield looks just like… a field!).

After this, we were joined by my colleague Jim Beach, who is a historical board games enthusiast and had set up Kingmaker for the students to play. We had plenty of cakes to keep us going – including some made by one of our students! – and people soon got into the spirit of faction-forming, creating and breaking alliances and general scheming required to win this particular game of thrones. This time around it was a Yorkist victory and a good time was had by all.

Students scheming, with cake! Guided by Jim Beach.

However, it wasn’t an afternoon just for fun. The day’s activities are tied to the students’ first assignment for this module, which is to write a blog post exploring popular/public history in the context of the Wars of the Roses. So they might write on how history is communicated to the public in the new information boards on the battlefield site, or how playing a boardgame like Kingmaker might provide insights into this period of history that sitting in a classroom does not. I’m excited to see what they write!

One of the battlefield information boards

Skip to content

• Image by Caroline Nielsen, Level 2 of Learning Hub Wellbeing Shelves

The History team pleased to announce that the University of Northampton Library has joined the Reading Well scheme!

The Reading Well books are guides to help people understand and manage their health condition, or that of their loved ones or colleagues.

Reading Well is a national scheme by the Reading Agency to help promote wellbeing and good physical and mental health through carefully selected books.

Each book is selected for the lists based on clinical evidence and are recommended by health care professionals and people with lived experience of the health conditions involved.

The Library has invested in the books not only to help promote student and staff wellbeing, but to support future healthcare practitioners and trainee teachers studying with us.

Boks are easily identifiable by their ‘Reading Well’ sticker on the front or book spine!

Reading lists are available on the following subjects:

• Long-Term Health Conditions: covering health and wellbeing, pain, arthritis, sleep problems, bowel conditions, breathing difficulties, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and support for carers and relatives
• Mental Health: topics include therapies and approaches, common conditions, common feelings and experiences and personal experiences
• Dementia and Dementia Care: topics include living well with dementia and support with relatives and carers
• Books for Younger Children: topics including feelings, worries, dealing with tough situations, guides to health conditions
• Books for Teens: topics include managing feelings, anxiety and depression, neurodiversity, body image, bereavement and grief, building confidence, surviving online, sexuality, gender identity and mental health

The books are fully searchable via NELSON and on the library’s online reading list service.

The lists are also available via the Reading Well website.

The books are stocked in most UK public libraries so please check locally if you would like to read them and you are outside of Northampton!

The introduction of the UON Reading Well collection has been a collaboration between Library and Learning Services staff Georgina Dimmock, Jenny Townend and Bonnie Hadman, and Dr Caroline Nielsen, Senior Lecturer in History and Heritage and historian of disability and health.

The University of Northampton has partnered with the Northampton Branch of the Historical Association to stage a programme of talks. As in previous years, these will take place online, on campus and in local schools: we are particularly keen to hear from History teachers who would like to host a talk at their school. All talks are free to attend and everyone is welcome.

Online booking for talks will open shortly!

19 October, 7pm online: Kerry Love (UON), ‘Banners in British Left-Wing Politics since 1800’ 

Banners and signs are a regular sight present at contemporary protests, and they often form the focal point of debates about the right to protest in the news. This talk will look at how and why they emerged in the eighteenth century, how they were used in developing popular politics, and how in spite of changing political circumstances, the left continues to draw on banner tradition and visuals in a number of ways in Britain. 

23 November (TBC)

18 January, Waterside Campus, University of Northampton: The Great Debate

The Great Debate is an annual national public speaking competition where students from school years 10-13 have five minutes to present their speech arguing their answer to a question. The question being asked this year is: Which historical place or person from your local area deserves greater recognition? We want you to explore the local history of your area or region in all of its diversity or singularity to identify a person or place that has contributed to the world that we live in today and should be better known. See the Historical Association website for further details and please contact [email protected] if your school would like to participate in the Northampton heat.

15 February, 7pm online: Neil Lyon (Local Historian), ‘”The Best Burglar in the County”: the story of Joan Wake and the Northamptonshire Record Society’

Joan Wake (1884-1974) is one of the most remarkable women Northamptonshire has ever produced. An eminent archivist and local historian, single-handedly she saved Delapré Abbey from demolition in the 1950s. This talk pays tribute to one of our greatest local characters of the twentieth century.

14 March, 7pm online: Dr Toby Purser (UON), ‘Alfred of Wessex and the Making of England‘

It is often erroneously thought that King Alfred of Wessex not only defeated the Vikings but was the first king of England. He was in fact the last king of the English kingdoms. His victory over the Vikings was without doubt an astonishing achievement but Alfred’s military victories were only the beginning since he spent 20 years winning the peace, by means of great private wealth, education, literature and a sophisticated government which propagated a powerful narrative of the English destiny. Alfred held the line against the Vikings but remained what he had always been – king of Wessex. His achievements laid the foundations for his grandson Aethelstan to conquer the Viking territories and declare the first Kingdom of all England, in 927, a generation after Alfred’s death in 899, an event that was by no means inevitable.

2 May, 7pm online: Dr David Waller (UON), ‘Donald Trump and the Remaking of American Political Religion‘

The election of Donald Trump as U.S. President in 2016 presents something of a puzzle: how and why did the least morally upstanding — and most unpopular — candidate of recent times receive the ardent support of many evangelical Christians? Why was the so-called ‘Religious Right’ so vocal in championing some of the more extreme policies of the subsequent Trump Administration? This lecture will explore the rise of Christian identity in American politics in recent years, its growing association with the Republican Party, and why some Christian voters ignored more obviously evangelical candidates in favour of Trump.

Northampton Guildhall (Source: Wikimedia Commons).

For further information about the programme or the branch, please contact the Chair Dr David Waller on [email protected] or the Secretary Prof Matthew McCormack on [email protected].

[No spoilers!]

The sixth season of Black Mirror was released on Netflix recently. Since it started on Channel 4 in 2011, Charlie Brooker’s portmanteau drama series has provided a distinctive commentary on the role of technology in our lives. Issues such as AI, robotics and surveillance – which we increasingly take for granted in the postmodern world – turn out to be nightmarish threats to the human condition. Worse still, no sooner can Brooker’s fevered brain come up with new nightmares, than they seem to come true.

Because it is science fiction, Black Mirror tends to be set in the near future, or an alternative version of the present. The technologies portrayed are usually a bit more advanced than those we have currently, but not unimaginably so: there is a sense that this is where things are going. So current phenomena like social media or reality TV are taken a step further, usually in a way that has horrifying consequences for the people involved. In imagining a future in order to comment on the present, it is classic dystopian fiction.

The current batch of episodes felt different to their predecessors, however. Many of the usual elements were present and correct: the dark tone, the Kafkaesque sense of not being able to escape something, the plot twist at the end. But in most cases, technology was not the main cause of the problem. And this was related to the other key difference: most of the episodes were set in the past.

Season six is the first time that Black Mirror has gone historical, and it has done so in a big way. With the exception of the first, all the episodes are set in the recent past and highlight social issues from the time. Mazey Day is about a paparazzi photographer, and is set in the 2000s when celebrity papping was probably at its height. Loch Henry is set in the present day, but concerns events that unfolded in the 1980s that have echoes of the ‘video nasty’ panic. Demon 79 concerns an immigrant shopworker in the 1970s, against the background of the National Front and the rightward shift of the Tory party. And Beyond the Sea presents an alternative version of the 1960s, where astronauts used technologies that were not available at the time.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Doing science fiction in the past is a challenge, as it is difficult to account for the presence of advanced technologies there. (Unless you incorporate time travel, which breaks all the rules of chronology, or create alternate universes.) With the exception of Beyond the Sea, all the technologies used in these episodes were of the time. And while they were less crucial to the plot, they all played their part, and indeed highlighted concerns from the time.

The paparazzi photographer was using mobile phones, laptops and a digital camera: only a decade or two before, these would not have been available to them. Home video is an important feature of the 1980s episode, and whereas Demon 79 was probably the least ‘technological’ of the lot, colour TV and audio tape played a role.

It is possible that Brooker is pivoting away from the ‘dystopian tech’ theme. After all, once you have commented on all of the current technological trends, you need somewhere else to go, and perhaps that place is the past. I would love to see more episodes with historical settings and ones that go further back in time, focusing on technologies that caused concerns in their era.

For example, the arrival of the telegraph in the Victorian period provoked alarm, since this provided an entirely new way of communicating quickly over great distances: some modern commentators have compared this to the arrival of the internet. Or how about the Mechanical Turk, the supposedly robotic chess player of the 1770s? Now that would be a great Black Mirror episode.

Matthew McCormack

Please check this page, and our social media feeds, regularly for updates on future events, and to register to attend!

On welcoming your student into the room, you can immediately tell from their body language that something is wrong…they appear distracted, arms tightly closed with their eyes fixed on the carpet. The student looks up at you and shares what is distressing them with you.

You are the first person they have told…what are you going to do next?

Situations like this can be difficult for personal tutors and managing students in distress is something that personal tutors can often find daunting. If you sometimes feel apprehensive about supporting distressed students, you are not alone.

This workshop provides a safe space to explore these challenges using interactive theatre and will equip you with management strategies to deal with such situations. The strategies have been devised to specifically build tutor confidence in working with students who present with distress at differing levels of severity.

Register here: https://www.ukat.ac.uk/curriculum/register?id=32

Please note: Booking is essential and early booking and registration is strongly advised. Places on this CPD training course are limited.

For more information, please contact [email protected]  

Please contact [email protected] for more information

The University of Northampton’s Centre for Historical Studies, in partnership with English Heritage, is hosting a two-day conference on 12 – 13 July 2023. The conference committee are calling for historians and professionals working in the field of wellbeing to present a papers of c.20 minutes in length, speaking on any part of the topic of wellbeing.

Papers could be from the perspective the history of wellbeing, or present viewpoints from contemporary organisations, such as perspectives from the heritage sector or community groups. As well as more traditional papers, we are also interested in suggestions for other forms of activity within a 20-minute timeframe.

In particular, we are looking for researchers and practitioners who can address topics including:

• Wellbeing shaped by social, economic and / or political forces
• Health and wellbeing
• Race and wellbeing
• Gender and wellbeing
• Heritage perspectives on wellbeing
• Medical perspectives on wellbeing
• Wellbeing and the history of emotions
• Voices from diverse community groups on wellbeing
• Approaches to the wellbeing of researchers who study history

If you would like to contribute to the conference, please submit a short extract (300 words max) detailing your paper or presentation idea, and its working title. Send this to the organising committee via Siobhan Hyland at: [email protected]. Please also include a link to a professional profile or a short CV. If you have any other questions, please use this email address.

Deadline for abstract submission: 14 April 2023

This two-day conference will be free for those attending. It will be an in-person conference. We have a small budget to support engagement from postgraduate researchers. If you would like to request support to attend this event, please let us know when you submit your abstract and provide an approximate cost.

Dominic Cummings has been in the news lately, you may have noticed. He drove, whilst infected with COVID-19, from Islington to County Durham, with his family. He then took them on a tour of County Durham, whilst infected, and after having been discovered defended his actions, supported by the PM and the government he advises…. Continue Reading →

This blog post is by our undergraduate student Joseph Price. Image from It’s A Sin The recent Channel 4 drama series ‘It’s a Sin’ directed by Russel T Davies offers a terrifying and heartbreaking insight into the experiences of gay men in the 1980s. The series follows the lives of a group of friends where… Continue Reading →

This blog is based on the presentation given on 8 November 2018, as part of the History at Northampton Research Seminars series at the University of Northampton. It explores the origins of perinatal (premature baby) care in the UK from 1947 to 1965, using recently available archival material for Northampton, made possible through the generosity of… Continue Reading →

In my last post I promised to give you some examples of interesting medieval women, whose experiences pushed beyond the misogynistic limitations they were theoretically subject to in a patriarchal society. As I’m a specialist in the fifteenth century, and I teach a third year undergraduate module on the Wars of the Roses, I thought… Continue Reading →

On 22 April 2022 the Searchlight Archive Research Group hosted a free online conference for Early Career Researchers (ECR) and Postgraduate Researchers (PGR). Entitled ‘Post-war Anti-Fascism, the Radical Right and the Far Right: Emotion, Culture and Identity’ it brought together MA students, PhD students and ECRs from the UK and Europe to share their research… Continue Reading →

The University of Northampton History department is home to the Searchlight Archive, a unique archive collection of material documenting the activities of British and international fascist and racist organisations from the 1930s onwards. It is one of the most extensive and significant resources of its type in Europe. Daniel Jones, the Searchlight Collections Officer recommends:… Continue Reading →