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Month: December 2025
Christmas in the IHR Wohl Library
This blog post was written by Sasha Pond and Sarah Snelling, the 2025-2026 Graduate Trainee Library Assistants at the IHR Wohl Library. This Christmas at the IHR Wohl Library we are highlighting four seasonal works from our collection. This includes an Edwardian work on a Kent Christmas tradition, a book on the Christmas Truce and Historical Memory, and…
All the World’s a Stage: Performativity in the Life History Interview
This blog post was written by IHR Fellow Nilakshi Das. Life history interviews are rarely simple acts of narrating one’s life story. They unfold as a dynamic, relational interaction in which the interviewer and interviewee jointly shape how a life story is told and later analysed. Oral Historian Penny Summerfield noted that ‘just as we…
The Catholic Counter-Reformation and its influence on Art – Just History Posts
Many of us are aware of the Reformation, and how it completely changed the landscape of Europe across the 16th century and beyond. But not so many are aware of the Catholic Church’s response to the Reformation, and how it tried to reform the Church and lure people back to Catholicism, whilst re-asserting its identity…
Humanity’s Worst Year Ever? – Just History Posts
Ask anyone on the street when they think the worst year in human history was, and I’m sure there’d be quite a variety of answers offered. Years during the World Wars; when the Black Death swept Europe; or even more recent events like during the Covid pandemic. War and disease are probably the most significant…
Medieval Unicorns in Europe – Just History Posts
Today we return to an old favourite series of mine, looking at the history of mythical creatures. In recent years, the unicorn has experienced a true revival, representing both LGBTQ+ communities and becoming a fan favourite of young children. But the unicorn was just as popular in medieval Europe, appearing countless times in artwork and…
The Eyewitness of History – Just History Posts
Today we have a wonderful guest post by jeweller Samuel Mee, giving us a fascinating tour through some key pieces of jewellery from history. It’s a real great snippet into just how important jewellery could be, and how much we can glean about certain times in the past from the jewellery which was fashionable. Samuel…
The Key to the North – Just History Posts
It’s been a little while since I’ve written about a castle, despite the plethora of incredible castles in England where I live, let alone ones further afield. Last month I visited Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to pick this series back up! Pontefract Castle was one of the…
The Craze for Electric Corsets and Belts – Just History Posts
Fashion is fashionable. It is ever-changing, inspired by culture, religion, and society, and every century has had its own “craze” where people go to extremes that are sometimes criticised by contemporaries, and sometimes by those looking back and wondering “what were they thinking?”. But one trend of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries was that for…
White Early American Southern Women’s Positions of Authority on Plantations 1607-1776 – Just History Posts
Today we have a really interesting guest post lined up for you. I’m happy to introduce Catherine Williams, a graduate student in Early Modern Studies, who will be telling us all about White women in the Early Modern American South. These women held unique positions of power and authority through their scarcity and through the…






