History Festival
Following the success of Caterham’s inaugural History Festival, we’re back for another year! Join us on Saturday 16 November from 11am to 4pm for a day packed with leading historians and authors.
The History Festival is for everyone interested in history, in compelling stories and is essential for young historians looking to extend their knowledge!
A fascinating event for anyone interested in history and essential for A Level and GSCE Historians looking to extend their knowledge.
Partner & local schools’ pupil gain free entry: use discount code STUDENT
2024 LINE UP:
- Hitler’s People by Richard Evans
Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? In his major new work, renowned historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us.
Hitler’s People is a chilling, brilliantly written work which allows the reader to understand the texture and values of the Third Reich and just how far individuals will go when so many normal moral constraints have disappeared.
‘Elegantly written and powerfully argued … it ranks among the best works on this terrible period’ Sunday Times
Richard J. Evans is one of the world’s leading historians of modern Germany. His books include Death in Hamburg (winner of the Wolfson History Prize), In Defence of History, The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War.
- How Ukraine became a Nation-State by Geoffrey Hosking
At the start of the twentieth century, only a few enthusiasts would have predicted that Ukraine would one day become a nation-state and a full member of the international community. Most people, including many Ukrainians, regarded if as part of Russia; in fact in most of the country publication in the Ukrainian language was prohibited.. Yet in 1991 it did become a sovereign nation, and its status is even more recognised today. The transition between complete dependence and complete independence was long and harsh, but gave the Ukrainians great determination and staying power.
Geoffrey Hosking is one of the world’s leading historians of Russia. He was for many years Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES) at University College, London. Geoffrey is the author of many seminal works on Russia, including A History of the Soviet Union, Rulers and Victims and Russia and the Russians. Geoffrey will soon be publishing a biography of Aleksandr Tvardovskii, the most popular Russian poet of the Second World War and editor of the Soviet Union’s leading literary journal for most of the 1950s and 1960s.
- The Thistle and the Rose: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret Tudor by Dr Linda Porter
Margaret, the first Tudor princess and queen consort and queen regent of Scotland, is the forgotten Tudor. Yet the elder sister of Henry VIII led a life of great drama, composed in equal parts privilege and pain, highlighted by personal danger, hardship and loss. Overlooked or dismissed by historians as ‘Henry VIII in a dress’ (not, in itself, necessarily an insult), Margaret has been ill-served by superficial biographies or heavy-handed academic attempts to paint her as an early feminist prototype. The Thistle and the Rose is firmly based on Margaret’s extensive correspondence and reveals a new perspective on Tudor Britain – Porter reveals an unexplored sibling rivalry with Henry VIII for control of Britain.
Linda Porter is the critically acclaimed author of five books on the Tudors and Stuarts. She was also the historical consultant on Lucy Worsley’s BBC1 series, Six Wives, and is currently working as a consultant for a major new Tudor documentary for BBC2.
- Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 by Professor Clare Jackson
Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as ‘Devil-Land’: a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed.
Clare Jackson’s dazzling, original account of English history’s most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and concluding with a not-so ‘Glorious Revolution’ a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England’s vexed and enthralling past.
Clare Jackson is Honorary Professor of Early Modern History in the Faculty of History at Cambridge. She has appeared regularly on discussion programmes for BBC Radio 4 and presented several television series for BBC2.
Copies of the author’s books will be available to purchase and each talk will be followed by a book signing. Thank you to Village Books in Dulwich Village for being the official bookseller of our festival!
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