Alice Diamond, ‘Queen of the Terrors’ in the interwar London underworld
Emily Burgess, who studied for PhD in history at the University of Portsmouth, has had a paper published in Women’s History Review. The paper looks at press depiction of Alice Diamond, leader of the interwar Forty Thieves gang.
Venice’s shifting relationship with their Ottoman Neighbours: between religious crusades and economic détente
UoP history student Elliott Thomas examines the surprisingly pragmatic relationship between Catholic Venice and the Islamic Ottoman Empire, which caused the Venetians first to fight against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto in defence of Cyprus, and then, motivated by economic considerations, to betray their Catholic allies in signing a peace treaty with the Turks resulting in three-quarters of a century of détente.
The man who fortified Portsmouth: uncovering the work of Sir Bernard De Gomme
Portsmouth was strategically important in the seventeenth century, but relatively little has been written on it. For their second-year Working with the Past project a group of UoP history students tried to discover more about three key Portsmouth figures from this time. In this first post in a series, Callum Ireland writes about the Dutch engineer who rebuilt the fortifications which shaped the Portsmouth seafront today.
Community Collaboration in Action
Over the last year, the History team’s Dr Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History, has been working with a local history group to find out more about our region’s railway workers. Here he reveals more about this exciting partnership – including where you can see what they’ve produced.
Victim or scheming seducer?
A level studies in history and media led UoP history student Damiana Kun to focus her Portsmouth history dissertation on how a patriarchal screen industry has ignored modern research and continued to attach negative stereotypes to one of history’s most famous and complex women.
Liberation Route Europe goes Live
As part of their second-year module, Working with the Past, second-year history students have been involved with Liberation Route Europe producing the first UK trails for LRE, including one in Portsmouth, highlighting Second World War remembrance sites and stories. This went live over the summer, and was featured by the BBC and Radio Solent.
People of the railways
Portsmouth History Graduate is Record Keeper of the Year
Chloe Anderson-Wheatley has been awarded the title of Record Keeper of the Year award by the Archives & Records Association, to recognise the extensive contribution she has made to record keeping for the Falkland Islands Government. Over the past eighteen months Chloe has significantly raised the profile of the Island’s National Archives service, increased local and international engagement and awareness with the collections, and has built new partnerships.
The misrepresentation of Catherine De’ Medici’s female rule
For her third-year dissertation UoP history student Sadie White looked into representations of the French Queen Catherine de’ Medici. As Sadie describes, Catherine has had a hard press over the years, both in her own time, and still today, as represented in contemporary TV and film drama. She is a salutary reminder of how female rule continues to be depicted negatively.
How white South Africa obstructed the decolonisation of Southern Africa during the Cold War
Our second piece by second-year UoP history student Elliott Thomas, shows how a militarily superior South Africa, in a bitter struggle for influence and to maintain its apartheid regime, sought to dominate its neighbours Namibia and Angola.
The end of the age of steam and the birth of the modern railways after World War II
Connor Law’s third-year history dissertation looked at imperatives to modernise the British railway system after a period of stasis during the war, arguing that the process dated back as far as the late Victorian period. Having been hindered but not halted during wartime, it was accelerated after 1948 by the newly-nationalised British Railways, with varying degrees of success.
Charting the perilous deep
Our own Karl Bell, Associate Professor in Cultural and Social History, has written an exciting new book on the supernatural legends associated with the seafarers of the Atlantic Ocean, from the eighteenth century to the age of steam, and beyond. The modules Karl teaches at Portsmouth include a third-year special subject on Magic and Modernity, a new second-year option on The Age of Crisis and Victorian Enchantments for the MA in Victorian Gothic: History, Literature and Culture.
Portsmouth history students launch interactive children’s trail at Portsmouth Cathedral
UoP history students on the Working with the Past module have collaborated with Portsmouth Cathedral to develop an innovative children’s visitor trail inviting children to explore the cathedral through a series of engaging clues based on real memorials and historical features. Visitors will discover stories of the people commemorated there, such as the unknown sailor from the Mary Rose and the Duke of Buckingham.
‘Jazzed Up’: the origins and impact of jazz in America
Miles Orr’s third-year history dissertation explored the origins of jazz by examining the lives and lyrics of three key African-American artists: Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Bolden, supervised by Dr Lee Sartain, who has a special interest in Louisiana’s history.
Researching the life stories of our local railway workers
In a project sponsored by the university’s Heritage Hub, Dr Mike Esbester has been working collaboratively with members of the Havant Local History Group on the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project. This researches the life stories of ten local railway workers from the 1870s to 1939, with posters about them placed at Havant railway station.The Allied bombing campaign and the destruction of two cities
In the second of our series of posts from our third-year history dissertation students, Rebekah Money describes the research she carried out for her dissertation on the allied bombing campaign against German cities during World War II. Investigating archival reports on the RAF, Rebecca gained a sense of how the campaign evolved over time. One of the reason the bombing caused such devastating firestorms at Hamburg and Dresden, was because of the use of marker bombs, flares used to illuminate targets at night.
Why the Polish Reformation deserves to be remembered
For his dissertation, third-year UoP history student Jacob Canavan chose to focus on Polish Protestantism which, while largely forgotten and repressed at home, proved to have a significant influence abroad, in spreading ideas which were to influence enlightenment thought across Europe.
Looking at memorials and practices of memorialisation
For their Thinking Like An Historian module we take our first-year history students to look at some of the memorials in Portsmouth, and then they write a piece for their portfolio assessment on a memorial of their choice. Students chose memorials in Portsmouth Cathedral, a memorial to Canadian troops who fought at Vimy Ridge in World War One, a memorial to those who served at Croydon airbase and a (not very successful) memorial to the holocaust in Hyde Park.
“In God is our trust” – How evangelical Christians became so crucial to Trump’s Republican Party
Despite being mired in controversy, including being put on trial for paying hush money to cover up an extramarital affair, the support of Evangelical Christians was crucial to Trump’s presidential victory, with Trump winning about 8 out of every 10 Evangelical voters. Second year UoP history student Elliott Thomas discusses the history of how the evangelical Christians and the Republican Party came to be so closely aligned, focusing on the lead up to the Reagan years.
From a Portsmouth history degree to conserving historic buildings at York
Mature student Mandy Wrenn was a great influence on the younger students while studying history at Portsmouth, and is still in touch with many of them. Below she describes how she describes how she put the skills she had learned during her Portsmouth history studies to good use when she went on to study (and gain a distinction) for a Masters in Historic Buildings at the University of York.
Visit to 17th Century Portsmouth
For the third-year UoP history option Britain in Revolution, students visit Old Portsmouth to see some evidence of Portsmouth’s 17th century history. Here they are outside the house where the Duke of Buckingham was murdered, on the High Street.The Devil’s Highway
Our own Professor Brad Beaven has published a new book about Ratcliffe Highway, the heart of London’s sailortown, which had a notorious reputation for knife crime and immorality in the nineteenth century.
Adulthood in Britain and the United States
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n November 2024 UoP Senior Lecturer Dr Maria Cannon published an edited collection Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z. The collection, published in the Royal Historical Society’s New Perspectives Series with Laura Tisdall of Newcastle University, looks at how ideas of adulthood have changed over the centuries
Wartime representations of Royal Navy submarines in the British press
Dr Rob James, UoP Senior Lecturer and Course Lead for the MA Naval, Maritime and Coastal History, has recently published an article, co-written with one of the MA’s alumni students, Martin Backhouse, in the journal War in History. The article examines the portrayal of Royal Navy submarines and their crews in the world’s first weekly illustrated newspaper, the Illustrated London News, during the Second World War.
64 Parishes: Louisiana’s history of civil rights activism
History at university is all about the detail – but not so detailed as to lose the overall plot. How do people in hundreds of towns and cities across a country combine in order to create a movement? This grassroots approach to the African American civil rights movement has been the recent historical trend – the lives of activists in communities across the nation that form change and may never be heard about by most people but are intimately connected to social revolution and national reform. Lee Sartain, UoP Senior Lecturer in history, writes about the 64 parishes project in Louisiana which records the lives of civil rights activists there, and his own contributions to it.
Realising and communicating a love for history, at Portsmouth and beyond
Ashleigh Hufton is remembered with great affection by the history team as a student who contributed keenly to history seminars from the outset and worked hard to develop her skills further during her studies in history at the University of Portsmouth from 2018 – 2021. Ashleigh has since been enjoying great success teaching history at secondary level. She writes about her studies at Portsmouth, and what she has gained from them since graduating.
50 Years On: the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act
Love it or hate it, you can’t escape it: the Health and Safety at Work Act has been an important part of UK working life (and wider) for 50 years.
To mark its 50th anniversary, a day-long symposium was held in London on 25 November 2024: Health & Safety at Work Act – 50 years on: still fit for purpose?
It was hosted by the Trade Union & Employment Forum of History & Policy, and brought together practitioners, trades unionists and academics – including the University of Portsmouth History team’s Dr Mike Esbester. Mike’s research focuses on histories of safety, risk and accident prevention in modern Britain.