This paper compares the efforts of the Worshipful Company of Weavers in London to control the movement of technology and textiles with its more laissez – faire management of migrant weavers, over the long eighteenth century. From the introduction of the engine loom in the 1670s, the Weavers’ Company regulated new technology in the London textile i…[Read more]

A review of Tim Hitchcock’s and Robert Shoemaker’s book London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800.

A response to criticism of Adam Curtis’ documentary film Bitter Lake about the war in Afghanistan. I argue that Curtis is a practitioner of ‘thick description’ and is pioneering a new form of history through the use of audio-visual archives.

An overview of the local history collection in the University of Leicester Library, one of the largest in the U.K. Includes a focus on poll books as a source.

There are now several open access book publishers using consortia funding models. But library staff on the ground are not always enthusiastic about re-purposing budgets to fund open access books. This post explores the sources of this scepticism.

William Farrell talks to historian Tim Hitchcock about the origins of the welfare state and its influence on contemporary political narratives.

Review of Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth-Century Household The World of Alice Le Strange, (review no. 1358)
https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1358

The use of drawing as a research method in local history.

The first PhD thesis awarded to a student in the Centre for English Local History: L. A. Parker’s Enclosure in Leicestershire, 1485-1607 (1948).

Books and pamphlets relating to the Peterloo massacre, held by the University of Leicester Library.

Does current open access policy work for local studies publishing and library collections?

The works of Gavin Stamp (1948 – 2017), writer and historian of architecture, held in the David Wilson Library at the University of Leicester.