Category: Historical Association
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Sawley Abbey and the Pilgrimage of Grace
It’s been an interesting week for my Pilgrimage of Grace project, despite not having done any work on the book itself. Last week, my friend Kate and I visited Sawley Abbey in the November drizzle. Like my visit to Whalley Abbey earlier in the year, it was really quite evocative, with clouds rolling across Pendle…
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Historical Association Conference 2019 Part 4
This is the final entry in a short series of posts about the Historical Association conference, held in Chester in May 2019. After the break, it was time for me to reprise my lecture from the Historical Association’s ‘Teaching the Tudors’ CPD day in York, ‘A History of the Reformation in 5 Ballads’. It was…
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Historical Association Conference 2019 Part 3
This is the third in a short series of posts about the Historical Association conference, held in Chester in May 2019. The opening session on Friday morning was a keynote talk from Dr Fern Riddell called ‘Uncomfortable Histories: From sex to the suffragettes’. Considering that the audience was mainly made up of teachers, Dr Riddell’s…
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Historical Association Conference 2019 Part 2
This is the second in a short series of posts about the Historical Association Conference 2019, held in Chester in May. The first general pathway session that I attended was given by Dr Tim Grady on ‘German Jews, the First World War and its Devastating Aftermath’. Gorlitz War Memorial is illustrative of German Jewish history…
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Final Countdown
This afternoon I had my mock viva, which was an interesting experience. It was reassuring, in that I survived and there was only one question that I felt I completely flunked. That said, there were several others that brought home to me the need to be certain of my own position, which of course is…
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Tidings of Good News
I was warned on Wednesday that my luck will have to run out eventually. That may not sound too much like good news, but the converse is, of course, that, in order to provoke the comment, things must be going relatively well at the moment. Work on the commonwealth chapter continues, with some quite major…
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Seminars and an article
An interesting week. I’ve spent most of it smoothing out the wrinkles in my epitaph ballad article. I think it’s nearly ready to go, which is quite pleasing. The process of refinement is interesting and one that I really quite enjoy, as it brings out the pedant in me. I’ve spent most of the week…
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Transcribing and Broadcasting
I went back to work on Wednesday, when my children went back to school. Most of my work this week has been on transcriptions of manscripts from the British Library but I’ve also read some secondary material. I’ve carried on working today, because despite my intentions to spend three whole days immersed in my primary…
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Time off
I’m having a couple of weeks off! So far I have successfully avoided doing any work on my thesis and this is good. Instead, I’ve done a lot of work for the Historical Association. Also, I did a 4.5 mile walk from Garstang, which I have to say wasn’t the most interesting walk I’ve done…
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Day Trip to London
Today I’ve been to London and back for a meeting of the branches and members committee of the Historical Association. We finished earlier than expected so I spent an hour and a half in the British Museum. I had a look round the Mexican gallery, as always, as I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the…