Adrian Smith

THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY BLOG: www: The Day Before Yesterday: Adrian Smith, modern historian – University of Southampton site (soton.ac.uk)

Last Saturday – 27 January – I gave a paper in Cambridge at the conference organised by the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University’s Labour History Research Unit: How Labour Governs: A Conference to mark 100 years of Labour Governments. Continue reading →

The ever sharp MP and political thinker Jon Cruddas was on yesterday’s Radio 4’s ‘Start the Week’ talking about his new book: A Century of Labour marks the centenary of the first Labour Government.  Ramsay MacDonald formed his first – minority – administration on 22 January 2024, combining the premiership with the position of Foreign Secretary. Continue reading →

Ironically, it was a passing remark by Helen MacNamara in her evidence to the Covid inquiry that left me shaking my head in disbelief (sadly her observations re the toxic misogynistic culture that prevailed in Downing Street were all too predictable).  The former deputy cabinet secretary believed that, having graduated in History, she and several of her associates were not properly qualified to understand briefings given by the Government's principal scientific advisers. Continue reading →

Last Monday I spent ten hours on the train - including Eurostar - travelling to a remote village on the border of Haute Marne and Burgundy in the vast Forêts National Park (vast as in seven Exmoors could fit into it - the distances between towns and villages are such that it feels like Texas with trees; unsurprisingly the area as a whole has the lowest population density in France, a reminder that one key factor in French fears for national security post-1870 was a population that didn't... Continue reading →

Last Monday I spent ten hours on the train - including Eurostar - travelling to a remote village on the border of Haute Marne and Burgundy in the vast Forêts National Park (vast as in seven Exmoors could fit into it - the distances between towns and villages are such that it feels like Texas with trees; unsurprisingly the area as a whole has the lowest population density in France, a reminder that one key factor in French fears for national security post-1870 was a population that didn't... Continue reading →

Last Monday I spent ten hours on the train - including Eurostar - travelling to a remote village on the border of Haute Marne and Burgundy in the vast Forêts National Park (vast as in seven Exmoors could fit into it - the distances between towns and villages are such that it feels like Texas with trees; unsurprisingly the area as a whole has the lowest population density in France, a reminder that one key factor in French fears for national security post-1870 was a population that didn't... Continue reading →

This is an article in the current issue (no. 158) of The Historian, the magazine of the Historical Association.  It was triggered by walking with my dog Django in the churchyard of St Nicholas in Brockenhurst on a mission to find Adeline Vaughan Williams' grave in the Fisher family plot.  I found the grave and an intriguing reference to the Spanish Civil War on another Fisher headstone... Continue reading →

As a researcher still active in the digital age how does it feel to look back on a thesis that you wrote half a century ago?  In what ways was your day-to-day experience of research and writing then so very different from that of today’s postgraduate, and in what ways has nothing changed?  What are the chances today of being left alone for twelve months to write forty thousand words on a subject of one’s own choice?  This autumn marks fifty years since I began my History MA, packing more... Continue reading →

A family friend, Simone Guyonvarch, lives part of the year in Sutton and part of the year on the Quiberon peninsula.  Her father, like many mariners from southern Brittany, served in the Free French Navy during the Second World War.  Postwar he stayed in the Navy, serving as a ship's carpenter and literally sailing around the world on board the aircraft carrier Dixmunde (formerly the escort carrier HMS Biter). Continue reading →

I wrote a short book about for Bloomsbury Music's 331/3 series on individual artists and albums, but things didn't work out and it's now been published by Takahe, the small outfit in Coventry run by Steve Hodder.  It was Takahe which in 2020 published Slouching Towards Big Pink - essays on Bob Dylan and The Band, Woody Guthrie, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Continue reading →