In this post, PhD student and Gale ambassador Megan Ison shows that even under lockdown conditions, our horizons need not be limited, as she takes us on a virtual vacation in France, using Gale primary sources, to get us in the mood for that holiday we plan to take, next year … Summer 2020 – […]
Tag Archives | leisure
The Invention of the Weekend
Articles by our own Professor Brad Beaven on how the current 48-hour weekend became the norm, were recently published in the Conversation and in The Independent: Link: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/weekend-lesson-four-day-working-week-a9274096.html Link: https://theconversation.com/history-of-the-two-day-weekend-offers-lessons-for-todays-calls-for-a-four-day-week-127382 Brad has published widely on urban popular culture, leisure and empire in Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Libraries as community hubs
Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in History at Portsmouth, has written a piece for Social History Exchange, a blog run by the Social History Society, to celebrate Libraries Week. In the blog Rob discusses how libraries have acted, and continue to act, as hubs for the local community. To read the blog, click here.
Going to the cinema? The changing uses of Portsmouth’s cinema buildings
In this blog, the second in a series of posts looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, discusses the changing uses of the city’s cinema buildings. Rob specialises in researching society’s leisure activities and teaches a number of units on film and the cinema, including, as part […]
Using Material Culture: 19th Century British Porcelain Teapot
Adam O’Leary, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog on the 19th century British Porcelain teapot for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit. In the blog Adam discusses the ways in which historians can use sources such as this to better understand society’s attitudes and assumptions in the […]
‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War
Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in History, has recently published an article in the journal Cultural and Social History on the role of public libraries in the naval town of Portsmouth, UK during the Second World War. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here. Abstract: In 1942 a library official […]