Beth Price has recently finished her third year at Portsmouth studying History, graduating with first class honours (congratulations Beth!). In this blog, the second one looking at students’ experiences of undertaking a placement year, she reflects on the benefits she gained from undertaking a placement at her local museum, the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.
I originally planned to go to Spain for my placement year as a Language Assistant at a primary school, however, due to COVID, I had to quickly find something else. I wanted to stay local to home so was really grateful when my local museum, Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, offered me a volunteering placement.
The placement was unpaid, so I had to make sure it worked around my part-time job at the Co-op. The museum was really accommodating about me having another job, so I was glad that I had told them about it early on in the application process. I learnt that being open and honest with your employer from the very beginning is the best way to get an experience that works best for you.
I quickly adjusted to my daily responsibilities such as welcoming visitors, preparing displays, and creating activities packs for children. One of my first concerns was that I would not have enough knowledge about the displays and collections, however, I made sure I read lots about them and had enough knowledge to answer questions about the local history. I was really pleased when I was able to answer questions from visitors.
I was given lots of different experiences such as going to other sites to see how they worked, as well as shadowing educational classes that were provided to visiting schools. I think my favourite experience was dressing up with a Year 6 class into Victorian farmyard clothing! I have never really thought much of my artistic skills, but after drawing the Christmas display board, the museum managers were really impressed and asked me to create further displays. This allowed me to explore a skill of mine that I didn’t know I had and made me realise how much I enjoyed drawing and being creative. It is definitely something I will keep in mind for when I am career searching now I have graduated.
Due to my placement year happening during COVID, the museum unfortunately had to close on multiple occasions. However, because of this, it meant that I was given the opportunity to work with a team that has a part in the cultural sector, organising events and workshops across the county. I was trained on how to edit their website, create the monthly e-newsletters, and run their social media accounts. This experience has been really beneficial to me as I will be able to apply those technological skills in future careers.
I enjoyed my placement as I gained lots of experience in many different areas. I would say that doing this placement has opened up my eyes to possible career paths in either the educational or cultural sector. Working in a museum environment was also really exciting and I learnt so much along the way which I used in the final year of my History degree. I would recommend doing a work placement to anyone as it’s a year that comes with so many benefits. Not only does it give you experience in a working environment, but it also may open up possibilities for future contacts and career decisions.
Carla Watts has just finished her History with Politics degree at the University of Portsmouth, graduating with first class honours. She is now going on to further study and work – as a result of her placement year, between the second and third year of her degree. Congratulations Carla! This is the first of two blogs that we will post extolling the virtues of undertaking a placement year while at Portsmouth university.
It was only in my second year of university that I became interested in law and the idea of becoming a solicitor. However, as my degree is in History and Politics I was unsure I would be able to find an employer who would take me on as a placement student. Nevertheless, after sending my CV to many different law firms I got an interview and was accepted. Therefore, having a degree in a different area could help you stand out as a candidate as you will bring different skills to the role.
I also want to note that the law firm I worked at was not advertising placement opportunities. Therefore, I would advise anyone looking to do a placement to apply to as many organisations as possible, whether the company has a placement scheme or not. It is important not to limit yourself and to keep your options open as this will increase the likelihood of your securing a placement.
I completed my placement at Darton Law and was employed as a Paralegal. My day-to-day tasks included making phone calls to clients, the police, prisons and courts; writing letters and assisting solicitors. The office I worked in mainly deals with criminal law so I worked on a variety of criminal cases, from shoplifting to murder, which gave me a wide range of knowledge and understanding of proceedings in the Magistrates and the Crown Court.
When I started my placement I was quite apprehensive as I had no prior experience with law and did feel quite overwhelmed. However, after a few weeks I had learnt so much and felt a lot more confident. The longer I was there, the more comfortable I was and my number of responsibilities quickly increased. I remember feeling very nervous about phone conversations but now I confidently call 101, the police, prisons etc… multiple times a day.
Furthermore, I have also had many opportunities from my placement which have significantly improved my knowledge and have helped me feel more confident. For example, I was able to go to Court and sit in on a hearing which taught me a lot about the court process. I went to a prison to have a meeting with one of our clients which was a very different experience. Speaking with a client face-to-face meant I was able to get more involved with, and have a greater understanding of, the case. All of this has made me confident when communicating with other clients as I now have more legal knowledge.
My placement also taught me about what it takes to be a lawyer and work in an office environment. As I would often stay late at work, I typically worked more than forty hours a week. This demonstrated how crucial it is to organise your time to prevent work from becoming overwhelming and to ensure you have a work-life balance too. This is not something which I have experienced at university and I feel that my ability to now do this will be essential when adapting to working life after I graduate.
Overall, my placement has been extremely beneficial and has taught me skills that I will use in the future. Furthermore, my manager also offered me to continue working part-time when I returned to university for my third year, and I know of other placement students who were offered the same. Therefore, placements could take the pressure off searching for a job as a graduate.
I would definitely recommend a placement, particularly because it provides the opportunity to ‘try out’ a career you think you might be interested in. It’s unlikely that you would get this opportunity as a graduate student when you are looking for a more permanent role. Therefore, even if you decide you don’t enjoy that line of work, your placement is not wasted as you will be a step closer to finding a career you are interested in.
The Placement team and my university tutor Mike were very supportive and helped me throughout my placement when I had any queries and were always checking up on me. Having a tutor also meant I felt connected to the university which helped me transition back to university life in my final year.
Having completed my placement, I knew that being a lawyer was a career I wanted to pursue, so I started making plans for the next steps before my third year had even started – and I’m really pleased that these have paid off!
In this blog Reiss Sims, who has just gained a first-class degree in History at Portsmouth (well done, Reiss!), discusses a project he worked on last year with some of his fellow History students for the module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Dr Mike Esbester. As part of their project, the students looked into how academic historians take their work ‘out of the academy’ and into the public realm. Reiss and his fellow students interviewed our Dr Karl Bell, who researches all things supernatural, to find out how he has tried to engage the wider public in the history he studies.
Last year, as part of our assessment for the second-year module ‘Working with the Past’, I and some of my fellow students interviewed tutors in the History team to find out how important they thought it was for academic historians to engage with the wider public. In this blog we reflect on our discussion with Dr Karl Bell – Reader in History at the University of Portsmouth. Karl was happy to take a step back from his busy schedule of all things supernatural, to give us an insight into what history he studies, why and how public engagement is valuable, and why the walls between academic and public history should be broken down.
The role of the historian has often been a topic of high debate. Traditionally, it was an occupation designed for the academic elite, serving to tell the stories of the extraordinary and powerful. Then, due to a rise in cultural and social scholarship during the mid-twentieth century, the historian’s role shifted towards becoming a more public-facing figure; bridging the gap between the academic and non-academic worlds by exploring the ‘ordinary’ and ‘normal’. As a result, concern as to whether historians should, or should not, engage with wider society still penetrates historical discussion – should history be read by the many, or by the few? Are all academics public intellectuals, or private? What is the use of history for non-historians? These are just some of the questions that intellectuals, such as Edward Said, have tried to answer, suggesting “there is no such thing as a private intellectual, since the moment you set down words and then publish them you have entered the public world”.[1] Nevertheless, our interview with Karl highlighted some of the ways in which he understands the relationship between history, the historian, and the public.
The public-facing historian is a philosophy that is echoed by Karl, whose research primarily focuses on supernatural beliefs, magical practices, folklore, and urban legends of the late eighteenth and early twentieth century. When asked what attracted him to his specific field of history, Karl suggested that he is “attracted to areas of our historical cultures and experiences that have tended to be overlooked or underappreciated”, and that by studying such areas, society can develop an enhanced understanding of how people lived in the past.[2] In addition, Karl believed that the academic and public spheres share differing perceptions of what history is, with much of the public perception focusing on “momentous historical events – political and military history.”[3] All of this counts towards the suggestion that interaction with the public can be achieved by varying the histories we choose to tell. For example, by studying the supernatural, Karl aims to provide the public with a “personal way of connecting back to similar such beliefs of the past” and thus making it more relatable, whilst also broadening their understanding of the possibilities of historical study.[4]
Whilst public lectures, seminars, and events are quite frequently used by historians to engage with the public in an intimate environment, television and radio can be quite the step up, allowing the historian to reach a national, and sometimes global, audience. In 2020, Karl made an appearance on Channel 4’s British history show Britain’s Most Historic Towns, discussing the role of Portsmouth and the Royal Dockyard during the Napoleonic Wars. Karl’s task was to take the complex subject of nineteenth-century Europe, without a script or time to go into immense detail, in order to make the show’s topic easily accessible to a wider audience. It is plausible to assume that the audience of the show could very well be made up of people with, and without, historical interest, making Karl’s job even more significant.
In his work, British historian Donald Watt has reaffirmed some of the points made by Karl, regarding the relationship between the historian and television. In an article titled, History on the Public Screen, Watt indicated that whilst the reception of history by the public may largely be the same, the historian’s style of working must adapt. Unlike in seminars, lectures, or webinars, television is ultimately concerned with entertainment, not total accuracy, and so the historian must attempt to make themselves, and their topic, clear and digestible.[5] In doing so, they are able to prevent distortion or misrepresentation of a particular topic. If kept in mind, Karl and many other historians have the ability to tackle the ‘classroom’ perception of “history”, by bringing it to life, and in doing so, has the power to encourage nationwide appeal.
The work of a historian, no matter the medium in which it is recorded, can have a substantial impact on society for decades. Be it a new school of thought, a unique interpretation of an historical topic, or work in Hollywood, the historical legacy left behind can be extremely powerful. When asked about what legacy he would like to leave with the public, Karl indicated that he wanted to continue spreading the message that history is not “owned” by historians, and that it is not a topic that is constrained to the limitations of the school curriculum. It is clear then, that Karl’s objective as a historian is not just successful research, but to encourage the wider public to explore and engage with history more freely. Hopefully, in doing so, a new generation of historians will emerge.
Notes
[1] Maurice St. Pierre, “Eric Williams: The historian as public intellectual,” Journal of Labor and Society 23, no. 1 (March 2020): 71.
[2] Karl Bell, “Working with the Past Interview,” interview by Reiss Sims, Daniel Squire, Sophie Sinclair, and Joshua Wintle, March 21, 2021, 1
University of Portsmouth History student Jenny Leng produced a blog for the Railway Work, Life & Death project as part of her work on the second year core module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Mike Esbester. Mike co-leads the RWLD project along with Karen Baker (Librarian, National Railway Museum) and Helen Ford (Manager, Modern Records Centre) with the assistance of Craig Shaw (Volunteer Administrator, NRM). In this blog, Jenny uncovers the stories of Portsmouth railway workers Godfrey and Albert Linegar, who were both involved in accidents at work, one resulting in heart-breaking loss.
On 12 January 2022 our own Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social History, presented at the first History research seminar of the new year (Happy New Year everyone!) with a thought-provoking paper on the effect of world war on the cinema trade in Britain. If you missed the paper, the recording is available here (you will need to the password Q64&W$?2).
In the seminar, Rob discussed how, during both the First and Second World War, the film industry was faced with a wide range of challenges that, in the worst-case scenario, threatened its continued existence. Rob explained that cinema trade personnel responded to the challenging wartime circumstances by calling on legislators to support the industry against cuts to staffing and materials, defending the trade against critics who believed that going to the cinema was a frivolous activity that didn’t have a place in wartime, and promoting the pastime as beneficial to the war effort. Rob demonstrated how cinema operators championed the pastime’s benefits as a propaganda source, entertainment medium, and economic commodity in order to protect it and ensure that cinema-goers could continue to enjoy their ‘hour or two of welcome relaxation’ when they needed it.
In this blog, Rob James explores how the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution impacted British film production in the mid-twentieth century. Rob tells us that the chance of a film being made depicting those tumultuous events depended on how they were presented. If the film demonstrated any sympathy towards the revolutionaries, then a ban was inevitable. Rob’s research covers society’s leisure activities and how they were shaped and controlled from both within and outside the entertainment industry. His research feeds into a number of optional and specialist modules that he teaches in the second and third year.
Still from the film Princess Charming (1934)
In the 1934 film Princess Charming, produced by Michael Balcon, one of Britain’s leading filmmakers at the time, Captain Launa, the upper-class suitor of the eponymous Princess, criticised the Bolshevik revolutionary activity taking place in the fictional Ruritanian country the action is set in, pointedly remarking: ‘There are no revolutions in well-governed countries’.[1] It’s a clear message for cinemagoers, particularly those living in Britain, that revolutions only occur in countries without adequate governing structures. The implication, therefore, was that the British state, with its long-standing history of democratic government, could be trusted to solve any difficulties that the country was currently facing.
The Jarrow marchers, 1936
And Britain was certainly facing significant difficulties in the decade in which this film was made. Suffering from economic decline, high unemployment and rising poverty, and confronted by a series of national and international crises, Britain was a divided country, with many of its citizens feeling deep social and political discontent. Historians have described the period as a ‘devil’s decade’, a near-apocalyptic era that witnessed a rupture in the normally stable system of government.[2] With many of the country’s inhabitants looking outwards towards Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany for an answer to their problems, this bubbling discontent was brought to the fore, and seemed to be encapsulated in, two events that took place in October 1936: the Jarrow March – when 200 men from that Tyneside town marched to London to protest about rising unemployment in traditional heavy industries; and the Battle of Cable Street – which saw clashes on London’s streets between Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts and 100,000 anti-Fascist protesters.[3]
The battle of cable street in 1936
On top of these tumultuous events, in December of that very same year the King, Edward VIII, renounced the throne so that he could marry the American-divorcee Wallace Simpson, creating a constitutional crisis.[4] The fallout from the Abdication crisis was huge. Society’s leaders were concerned that if this important pillar of the British constitution could fall, then so could the others – namely democratic parliament could come crashing down at the whim of political extremism. As a result, any depiction of revolutionary activity in popular cultural media, like film, became a touchy issue. The political censorship of the film medium thus increased dramatically throughout the decade, and any film that attempted to deal with some of the most pressing social issues of the day was likely to be banned by the British Board of Film Censors, the organisation in charge of overseeing the censorship of the film medium.[5] Reading the reports written up by the censors, it becomes clear that whether a film was passed or not was dependent on how it presented the ‘revolutionary’ element. In 1931, for example, The Red Light, a film said by the censor to depict London ‘on the eve of Red Revolution’, was prohibited. The film’s setting was its undoing – it was based too close to home![6] Another film, Red Square, despite being set in Russia, was prohibited in 1934 because it contained ‘sordid settings’.[7] However, two other films that dealt with the revolutionary topic, Soviet and Knight Without Armour, were allowed to be produced; the former because, the censor noted, it emphasised ‘the forced labour and hard striving of the working class under the five year plan’; the latter because, it made ‘no attempt at political propaganda’.[8]
The censor’s comments about Knight Without Armour‘s political neutrality aren’t quite true, however. The film does contain political propaganda. In its depiction of the Bolsheviks it openly condemns revolutionary activity. Produced by Alexander Korda, another leading filmmaker of the time who was sympathetic to the British constitution, Knight Without Armour is set in the throes of the 1917 Russian Revolution and depicts the Bolsheviks as brutish, self-indulgent, and only interested in personal gain.[9] The country they have taken over is shown to have been thrown into chaos because of their activities. By contrast, the Russian aristocracy, epitomised by Marlene Dietrich’s Countess Alexandra, is portrayed in a sympathetic light. In one stunning sequence during which the revolutionaries storm the Countess’s palace, Dietrich is clothed in white and bathed in light: the embodiment of aristocratic purity and virtue.
Marlene Dietrich in Knight Without Armour (1937)
The revolutionaries, in sharp contrast, are darkly attired and cast in shadow: a sinister, anonymous mob descending the hill to brutalise the Countess and lay waste to her home. By juxtaposing the protagonists in this way Knight Without Armour makes a powerful statement against Soviet Russia. It both instructs and educates the audience against the folly of trying to overthrow the system. It is film as political propaganda, persuading the audience to think in a particular way about the Revolution. In a time when the very foundations of British society were appearing to crumble, this was a very powerful message indeed. And this was undoubtedly the reason why the film was passed by the censors.
Knight Without Armour: revolutionaries
Of course, no film ever reflects reality, but all films will reveal something about the time in which they were made. And the British films that were made in this period that featured any form of revolutionary activity are perfect examples of this.
The messages they presented to cinemagoers who may have been agitating for radical change were clear: any form of violent overthrow of the established order was to be avoided at all costs, and there would be no need for a revolution in this well-governed country!
[2] Early proponents of this view include Noreen Branson and Margot Heinemann, whose Britain in the Nineteen Thirties (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971) painted a picture of a country on the brink of collapse.
[3] Juliet Gardiner, The Thirties: An Intimate History (London: Harper Press, 2010), 441-446.
[4] Frank Mort, “Love in a Cold Climate: Letter, Public Opinion and Monarchy in the 1936 Abdication Crisis,” Twentieth Century British History 25, no. 1 (2020), 30-62: 33.
[5] Robert James, “‘The People’s Amusement’: Cinemagoing and the BBFC, 1928-48”, in Behind the Scenes at the BBFC: Film Classification from the Silver Screen to the Digital Age ed. Edward Lamberti. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 16-27: 17.
[6] British Board of Film Censors, ‘Scenario Reports’, British Film Institute, London. 15 December 1931.
[8] See Ibid., 24 July 1933 and 18 February 1935 respectively. Soviet was initially opposed (Ibid., 11 March 1933) but was allowed to be produced after amendments were made.
