The past few years have seen a vigorous resurgence of public and academic debate and controversy regarding the British Empire, its place within Britain's own history and the legacies of British colonial practices. In spite of this reinvigorated discussion of empire, education and schooling seem to have been an area largely overlooked within the…

I opened an antique chest inherited from my great-great uncle and unravelled the strands of his life as an evangelical minister in late 19th-century Italy, unpacking the cover-ups in Britain's history of Empire and bringing to light the ingenious but ordinary ways in which a handful of families, even today, shore up their wealth. At the heart of…

This paper reads the U.K. Government's "fundamental British values" project alongside two children's Gothic novels, "Coram Boy" (2000) by Jamila Gavin and "City of Ghosts" (2009) by Bali Rai. In 2011 the U.K. Government outlined what it described as "fundamental British values" (FBV), making it a requirement…

Trends in attitudes to abortion in Britain are reviewed from the perspective of opinion polls and sample surveys for the half-century since the passage of the Abortion Act 1967. The public's approach to abortion is found to have been mostly 'situationalist', conditioned by the circumstances in which abortions were to be carried out, rather than…

This article examines the British National Party (BNP)'s opposition to gay men during the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on the sociological concept of "homohysteria," it examines written material from BNP publications during those decades, looking specifically at the AIDS crisis, the party's belief in a "queer conspiracy," and the…

This paper seeks to explore the development, impact and contribution made by the New Ideals in Education conferences, which were held between 1914 and 1937. In particular, it will examine how the group emerged from the English Montessori Society and forged an identity of its own based on the thoughts and ideas of its two major protagonists: Edmond…

This article analyses plays written for child performers in the early twentieth century. The plays chosen are classified as "instructional" and aimed at developing pupils' knowledge of the curriculum. The focus is on understanding why these plays were useful for Froebelian educators in the period. Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) was a…

In 1994, I embarked on a PhD study to examine, for the first time, what happened inside the classroom during history lessons in pre-Second World War Britain. Previous studies had relied largely on a study of textbook content and official curricula guidance, without stopping to ask how and whether such materials were actually used in pre-war…

This article looks at the transmission of ideas in the British Enlightenment. The focus is on three individuals, Matthew Boulton, James Keir and Anna Seward, who constructed and communicated messages about industrialisation in the late eighteenth century to the public rather than through formal education. Boulton, Keir and Seward attempted to…

Working from a feminist/critical cultural studies perspective, which perceives culture and society as imbued with political tensions, I pose two central questions in this article. First, how can community-based, consumer activism be understood as a strategy adopted by marginalised groups to assert rights claims? I focus on British women's…

In 1792 more than 350,000 people in Britain signed a petition calling for an end to the slave trade. It was, writes historian Adam Hochschild in his book "Bury the Chains," "the first time in history that a large number of people became outraged, and stayed outraged for many years, over someone else's rights". In 1807--after 15…

This discussion of the microform publication of primary source material focuses on the area of British history between 1450 and 1750. The efforts of University Microfilms International and Harvester Press Microforms Ltd. are reviewed, and a possible microform series of material from this period is suggested. Four references are listed. (MES)

Participants in the public discourse pertaining to religious education and education for citizenship in English schools between 1934 and 1944 included many "Christian educationists". They advocated a conservative and elitist form of education for citizenship as taught through indirect training, Arnoldian public school traditions and…

A European Studies course for students "incapable of doing French" taught at a British secondary school is developed on the premise that students will attempt to live up to the teacher's expectations. With only middling enthusiasm from his students, the teacher is requesting comment from readers. (JH)

Analyzes the economic and political responses to the Great Depression of the 1930s in Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Britain. States that economic policies had little direct effect on the survivability of governments during the 1930s. Concludes that processes of national consensus formation determined the survival or…