On Monday 18 September, members of the Society’s Council visited colleagues at the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands. The Visit is the latest in this autumn’s series of meetings with historians at universities across the UK.

The day brought together historians and professional support staff from the Centre for History, at Dornoch, with members of the Society’s Council. An RHS panel focused on the Society’s role in supporting distinctive departments like the Highlands and Islands; on distance learning, in which the Centre specialises; employability for graduate historians; and the state of History in Scottish Higher Education. Presentations from Centre staff described their specialist work on public and community history across the northern Highlands, and its links to tourism and economic development.

Public history was also the focus for a concluding public lecture–by our guest speaker Professor Lucy Noakes (Essex)–on ‘Histories, communities and feelings in the centenary of the First World War’. Lucy’s lecture, delivered to audiences in Dornoch and online, discussed the form and content of commemorative projects, 2014-18, and their relationship to regional communities, including those in the Highlands and Islands.

Many thanks to Lucy, and all those who attended her lecture; to our co-organisers of the Visit at the Centre for History; and to the historians at University of the Highlands and Islands for attending and hosting this event.

Forthcoming Visits and sponsored lectures

Visits are an opportunity for the Society’s Council members and staff to meet with historians. Visits also include an RHS sponsored lecture by a guest lecturer.

Our next Visit (Monday 16 October) is to historians at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, and includes a public lecture, ‘Naming and Shaming? Telling Bad Bridget Stories’, with guest lecturers Elaine Farrell (Queen’s University Belfast) and Leanne McCormick (Ulster). Booking for this event is now open.

Further Visits, to the universities of York St John, York and Brunel, take place in early 2024.

Visits are an important opportunity, for members of the Society’s Council and staff, to meet with historians, researchers and students, and to discuss priorities, interests and concerns relating to research, teaching and the profession.

Having met with colleagues at Edge Hill and Northampton earlier this year, the Society continues its 2023 programme of Visits to history departments with meetings at Canterbury Christ Church and Kent (11 September), the Highlands and Islands (18 September) and Hertfordshire (16 October).

Each Visit includes a public lecture given by a guest lecturer to which all are welcome. Further details and links for booking are below. We look forward to seeing you at one of these events.

‘The Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved African People and Restoration England’, with William Pettigrew (Lancaster University), RHS-Sponsored Lecture at Canterbury Christ Church University: 5pm, Monday 11 September 2023

 ‘”In memory of my Great Grandfather and his infant son”: Histories, communities and feelings in the centenary of the First World War’, with Lucy Noakes (University of Essex), RHS-Sponsored Lecture at the Centre for History, Highlands and Islands University, Dornoch: 5.30pm, Monday 18 September 2023

‘Naming and Shaming? Telling Bad Bridget Stories’, with Elaine Farrell (Queen’s University Belfast) and Leanne McCormick (University of Ulster), RHS-Sponsored Lecture at University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield: 5.30pm, Monday 16 October 2023

Visits in early 2024 include to the universities of York and York St John (March) and Brunel (May), with guest lectures from Fay Bound Alberti (KCL) and Corinne Fowler (Leicester).

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the appointment and election of four new members to its governing Council. All four will take up their posts following the Society’s AGM held on 24 November 2023. Their appointments follow open calls, earlier this year, for the new post of Vice President and that of Treasurer; and the recent election of two new Councillors from the Society’s Fellowship.

As Treasurer, Dr John Law will replace Professor Jon Stobart, who steps down in November after his four-year term. As Councillors Professor Mark Knights and Professor Iftikhar Malik replace Professor Barbara Bombi and Professor Thomas Otte who also end their four-year terms in November. From November, Barbara Bombi takes on the post of RHS Secretary for Research and Chair of its Research Policy Committee, replacing Professor Jonathan Morris who steps down after five years in this role.

Professor Clare Griffiths (Cardiff University), Vice President of the Royal Historical Society

Clare Griffiths is Head of History and Professor of Modern History in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University. Prior to taking up her current position in Cardiff, she taught at the University of Sheffield, Wadham College, Oxford, and the University of Reading, and she has held visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Museum of English Rural Life.

Clare’s research focuses on the political and cultural history of Britain in the twentieth century, with a particular interest in the history of the countryside, agriculture and landscape. She is the author of Labour and the Countryside: the Politics of Rural Britain, 1918-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2007) and co-editor of Class, Cultures and Politics (OUP 2011). Her published articles and essays include work on political debates in Britain during the Second World War, the commemoration and historical memory of early nineteenth-century radicalism, and many aspects of British farming and rural life. She has also written extensively for the Times Literary Supplement, particularly on visual art.

Clare was a member of the Society’s Council from 2018 to 2021, during which time she served on, and subsequently chaired the Research Support Committee.

Dr Michael John Law, Treasurer of the Royal Historical Society

John Law was, until his retirement, a Research Fellow in History at the University of Westminster. He joined the academic world later than is usual, completing his PhD when he was 54 years old. John’s work considers the experience of modernity in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. He is the author of several academic books. His latest, A World Away, was published by McGill Queen’s University Press in 2022, and examines the impact of holiday package tours on the people of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. John was a council member and trustee at the University of Sussex from 2011 to 2017.

Prior to academia, John was a partner at PwC and an executive at IBM. In these roles, he provided consulting advice to the world’s largest financial institutions. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Professor Mark Knights (University of Warwick), RHS Councillor

Mark Knights is Professor of History at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on early modern political culture in Britain and its empire, and on the history of corruption.

Mark’s most recent publication is Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire 1600-1850 (OUP 2021). He is currently working on a cultural biography of a seventeenth-century merchant philosopher; a book charting the history of corruption in Britain and its empire from the 1620s to the 2020s; and the Oxford Handbook of the History of Corruption.

Mark is a member of the editorial boards of Boydell and Brewer’s ‘Eighteenth Century Studies’ series and of the journal Parliamentary History. He has held numerous posts in his department and University.

Professor Iftikhar H. Malik (Bath Spa University), RHS Councillor

Iftikhar H. Malik is Professor-Emeritus at Bath Spa University, where he taught history for 27 years, following his five-year fellowship at St Antony’s College, Oxford. Presently, a member the Common Room at Wolfson College in Oxford, his Curating Lived Islam in the Muslim World: British Scholars, Sojourners and the Sleuths with Routledge came out in June 2021.

In November 2022, his The Silk Road and Beyond: Narratives of a Muslim Historian (Oxford University Press, 2020), received the UBL Award for the best non-fiction work in English in Pakistan.

Iftikhar’s other studies include Pashtun Identity and Geopolitics in Southwest Asia: Pakistan and Afghanistan since 9/11 (Anthem, 2016 & 2017); Crescent between Cross and Star: Muslims and the West after 9/11, (OUP, 2006); and Islam and Modernity: Muslims in Western Europe and the United States (Pluto, 2003).

Each year the Society publishes two volumes of primary source materials, edited by historians who’ve worked closely with these documents. The volumes appear in the Society’s Camden Series of scholarly editions and make new sets of primary sources available for research.

Each volume, compiled and edited by a specialist in the subject, includes an Introduction and full references and annotations. Camden Society volumes are published online and in print for the Society by Cambridge University Press.

The Camden Series volumes, 2022, provide primary sources on everyday life in Early modern England and high politics in Britain, Ireland and Germany in the interwar years.

Volume 64: The Diary of George Lloyd (1642-1718), edited by Daniel Patterson (November 2022)

Virtually unknown to scholarship, Lloyd’s diary is not a record of notable events. Rather, it is a uniquely quotidian text consisting of regular daily entries documenting the activities and experiences of an individual far removed from great events.

Lloyd’s diary will be an invaluable resource for scholars studying many aspects of early modern English social and cultural history, including sociality, fashion, religious observance, courtship, food and drink, and working life.

The Diary of George Lloyd, 1642-1718 is now available online and in print from Cambridge University Press. RHS Fellows and Members may purchase hardback print copies directly from the Society for £16 per volume or £25 for both 2022 Camden Series volumes. To do so please email: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

Read the Introduction to The Diary of George Lloyd, 1642-1718.

Here, the editor Dr Daniel Patterson introduces George Lloyd and his world, on the Society’s blog, ‘Historical Transactions’.

Volume 63: Aristocracy, Democracy, and Dictatorship. The Political Papers of the Seventh Marquess of Londonderry, edited by N. C. Fleming (September 2022).

The seventh Marquess of Londonderry (1878–1949) corresponded with the leading political figures of his day, including Winston Churchill (his second cousin), Neville Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald. Londonderry’s amateur diplomacy in the 1930s meant that his regular correspondents also included Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Franz von Papen.

Aristocracy, Democracy, and Dictatorship is now available online and in print from Cambridge University Press. RHS Fellows and Members may purchase hardback print copies directly from the Society for £16 per volume or £25 for both 2022 Camden Series volumes. To do so please email: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

Read the Introduction to Aristocracy, Democracy, and Dictatorship. The Political Papers of the Seventh Marquess of Londonderry.

Here, on the Society’s blog, ‘Historical Transactions’, the volume’s editor Professor Neil Fleming introduces the interwar political networks of the Marquess of Londonderry.

About the RHS Camden Series

The Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series is one of the most prestigious and important collections of primary source material relating to British History, including the British empire and Britons’ influence overseas. The Society (and its predecessor, the Camden Society) has since 1838 published scholarly editions of sources—making important, previously unpublished, texts available to researchers. Each volume is edited by a specialist historian who provides an expert introduction and commentary.

Today the Society publishes two new Camden volumes each year in association with Cambridge University Press. The series is available via Cambridge Journals Online and full access is available to the Society’s Members and Fellows, as part of new member benefits from 2022. We welcome proposals for new Camden volumes: for more on how to submit an idea to the editors, please see the Camden Series page of the RHS website.