History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | Second World War

D-Day sketch

Fear of the Unknown: An investigation into individual experiences of the D-Day campaign

By on June 25, 2019 in Learning in Focus, Public History

Cameron Meeten, third year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on the research he and his fellow students undertook as part of a final year group research project. Along with fellow final year students Ian Atkins, Dom Coombs, Patrick Kelliher and Chris Kyprianou, Cameron looked at the ‘fear of the unknown’ felt by D-Day combatants in June 1944. As well as presenting their findings as part of the unit’s assessment, the students also gave a public presentation at the D-Day Story, Southsea. The final year group research unit is co-ordinated by Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social History at Portsmouth. For […]

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Going to the cinema? The changing uses of Portsmouth’s cinema buildings

By on August 24, 2018 in Learning in Focus, Public History

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 of the Problems and Perspectives unit, ‘History at the Movies’ in the first year, ‘The Way to the Stars: Film and cinema-going in Britain, c. 1900-c. 2000’ option in the second year, and a Special Subject on ‘Cinema-going in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945’ in the third year. Going to the cinema was an important leisure pastime […]

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Using Visual Sources: “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!”

By on April 16, 2018 in Learning in Focus

Nia Picton-Phillips, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on a Nazi propaganda poster featuring Adolf Hitler for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit. Nia discusses the ways in which the image was used to promote various aspects of Nazi ideology. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.  The use of visual sources as a means of understanding the past has transformed historical knowledge. The ‘pictorial turn,’ as suggested by W. J. T. Mitchell, was “declared a new cultural phenomenon: a transition from a culture dominated by the book to one dominated by images.” [1] […]

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‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War

By on February 27, 2018 in New Publications

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 in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city’s inhabitants to ‘read for victory’, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country’s political and civic elites to encourage the nation’s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified […]

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Chocolate Zoned (2)

“Don’t blame the shopkeeper!!”: Food, drink and confectionery advertising and British Government market controls during the Second World War

By on December 8, 2017 in New Publications, Research in Focus

An article on the ways in which food, drink and confectionary companies used advertising to respond to the government’s control of the market during the Second World War by Mick Hayes, doctoral student in History at the University of Portsmouth, has recently been published in the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here. Abstract The aim of this paper is to illustrate the impact of zoning and pooling on food, drink and confectionary brands during the Second World War, something that has not been covered in depth in historical literature, despite the significant amount of research […]

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