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William And Mary: The Court Divided

Like James I, King William III was fundamentally unhappy with the stuffy formality of England’s vast crumbling royal estate. But unlike James, who virtually abandoned Edinburgh, William maintained a second court, and a parallel suite of royal houses, in the Netherlands.

War Games at the Field of the Cloth of Gold

2020 marks the 500th anniversary of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, one of the most extraordinary diplomatic events of the late medieval period.

Choosing Religious Atrocities in Ireland

Nowhere in Europe have the wars of religion lasted longer than in Ireland. At the heart of this are two rival sets of memories of atrocities: above all, Protestants recall the massacres of the 1641 rebellion, and Catholics recall the massacres perpetrated by Oliver Cromwell in 1649.

Charles II: The Court in Exile

For a decade after the execution of Charles I the Stuart courts were based in the Low Countries and France. Always short of money, but determined to maintain splendour and dignity, Charles II rented a series of mansions and used them as the headquarters of the exiled monarchy.

The Cato Street Conspiracy, 1820: A Study in Terrorism

The lecture discusses their identities, motives and impact, and the forgotten fact that their failure ended British revolutionary fantasies for a century.

How to Survive a Massacre in Europe’s Wars of Religion

Europe’s Wars of Religion were fought against entire populations, and were punctuated by events remembered as atrocities: such as the siege of Leiden in 1573-4 or, most notoriously, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacres in France in 1572.

The Business of Santa Claus in Lapland

The myth of Santa Claus has been translated into an extraordinary market on a global scale. But how did this marketing success materialise? How did Finland become the home of Christmas?

Gardens of Empire: The Role of Kew and Colonial Botanic Gardens

Sydney’s botanic garden, founded in the early nineteenth century, was expected to ship new plants 'home' to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, from where they could be transplanted to other colonial gardens, to see if they could become valuable new crops to enrich the British Empire.

Charles I: The Court at War

During the Civil War Charles I’s court, denied access to its usual country residences, was forced to set itself up in a series of makeshift locations. The most important of these was Oxford which Charles converted into a large and well-organised courtly campus.

Slavery, Memory and Reparations

This talk will examine how the history and memory of enslavement shaped questions of identity and citizenship in Europe.

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