H&P encourages historians to use their expertise to shed light on issues of the day. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece for publication, please see our editorial guidelines. We currently have 338 Opinion Articles listed by date and they are all freely searchable by theme, author or keyword.
An unexpected feature of the 2024 general election has been the scandal around political betting. As Laura Beers explains, however, betting on political outcomes is hardly a new phenomenon. Indeed, in the early decades of the twentieth century it was even a feature of some transactions in the London Stock Exchange.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has regularly been labelled 'boring' by satirists and by more flamboyant political opponents. As the 2024 general election campaign begins in earnest, we can expect to hear more of this. But, Professor Simon Szreter argues,genuinely transformative British politicians have been distinguished by their capacity to master the tough challenges of government rather than by their personal charisma.
Kier Starmer appears to be looking more and more to the New Labour era to guide him to election victory. He may well be right to do so, since 1997-2010 was a period of sustained electoral success for Labour, unparalleled before or since.
Alastair J Reid asks why the main opposition parties are so against forming alliances with each other, and suggests that they look more deeply into their own party histories.
Although the invasion of Ukraine will evoke memories of the suffering imposed on its people by the regime of Joseph Stalin, in an age of smartphones Vladimir Putin lacks Stalin's ability to control the flow of information. Members of the Russian military know they are likely to be held to account, and that their actions in Ukraine will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Thucydides' account of the Athenian plague and its social disruption has been heavily drawn upon during today's pandemic, as Neville Morley explains. Yet Thucydides was not offering immutable laws of human behaviour – and there are aspects of today's social norms around Covid-19 that he might have approved.
Professor Paul Cartledge, newly appointed President of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, reflects on recent protest movements and the need for decolonisation and renewal in the classics – and in the great museum collections.
Simon Szreter revisits a classic paper from 2005 authored by Professor Ira Katznelson, which set out a history of the public policy that fostered black economic disadvantage in the United States.
Trevor Burnard explores the shift in consciousness around the acceptibility of slavery in the mid-eighteenth century, and suggests how Britain should undertake a serious reckoning with this history.
Lucy Delap, D-M Withers and Margaretta Jolly on the approaches feminist thought has taken to business and sustainability, and how we can use those lessons in a post-Covid future.
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