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Hill conversation with his niece

 Talking about the intellectual biography of Christopher Hill, who probably needs no real introduction from me, but perhaps I can say: eminent historian of 17th-century England, Marxist, former master of Balliol, and extremely prolific writer and communicator. He won't like me to put it quite like this, but he's written and edited, or edited, at least 17 books, written notes and articles—over 110 at the last count—and reviews, adding in this morning's as the latest contribution, over 450, probably nearer 500. An enormous output, which would indicate a sustained interest in communication. But before we get on to that side of things, perhaps we should start out with your early career, Christopher, as a Yorkshireman. I'm sure you'd like to declare your earliest interest in terms of playing cricket.  Yes, my highest ambition was to play cricket for the country for which I have a birth qualification. And in those days, playing cricket for Yorkshire was a much higher ambi...
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The World Turned Upside Down: the failure of Ayscue's expedition to Barbados in 1651

 David Appleby's interesting account of this expedition can be read  here  .
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My Review of James Hart, Proceedings against the Scandalous Ministers of Essex, 1644-1645

My review of this book has just appeared in the Transactions of The Essex Society for Archaeology and History (4th Series, Volume 15 (2024), Pp.154-155. 
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Conference on the English Revolution in July, 2027

  What was revolutionary about the English revolution?  Tuesday, 20 and Wednesday, 21 July 2027 Institute of Historical Research  Opening keynote Professor David Como (Stanford) Closing address Professor Emerita Ann Hughes (Keele) Speakers Sophie Aldred (Jesus College, Oxford); Sam Fullerton (North Texas) Will White (Birmingham Newman); Waseem Ahmed (UCL) Alex Beeton (History of Parliament); Ellen Paterson (Keele) Michael Bennett (Sheffield); Elizabeth Hines (Johns Hopkins) Courtney MacPhee (Stanford) Commentators   Kate Peters (Murray Edwards, Cambridge); John Walter (Essex)   Generously supported by:  The Elizabeth and Conrad Russell Fund Anglo-California/Stansky Fund for British Studies (Department of History, Stanford University)  The causes and consequences of the civil wars of the 1640s are amongst the most heavily contested and intensively studied periods in the history of these islands...
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Dynastic Politics and Religious Difference: English Catholics and the Crisis of the 1620s

 Kathryn Marshalek's important thesis on this subject can now be seen and read on the webpage of Vanderbilt University's Library. It is in her copyright but can be downloaded  here  . It really is an important piece of work.
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University of Oxford seminar: Early Modern Britain (pasted)

  Early Modern Britain Seminar, Michaelmas Term 2026 Thursdays at 5 pm, Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College; online on Teams (please email ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk) 15 October Prof. Lucy Wooding (Lincoln College) ‘“Sinceritie in these daies was sure borne to be sad”: Religion, Dissimulation and Elizabethan Drama’ Jeffrey Knapp, ‘Preachers and Players in Shakespeare’s England’, Representations 44 (1993), 29-59; Kilian Schindler, Religious Dissimulation and Early Modern Drama: The Limits of Toleration (2023), Introduction 22 October Rev Dr Brian Mac Cuarta (Campion Hall) ‘Irish wheat for London’s food crisis, 1630-1631’ Paul Slack, ‘Books of Orders: the making of English social policy 1577-1631’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , 5th ser. 30 (1980), 1-22; Norman Gras, The evolution of the English corn market from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (Cambridge MA, 1915), 77-86; Raymond Gillespie, ‘Harvest crises in early seventeenth-century Ireland...
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Today's historiographical reflections

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My historiographical report today is going to be rather short. I haven't found anything very interesting on the internet today, but I did come across a couple of photographs of Peter Lake and Richard Cust on Sandy Solomon's Facebook page. She's the wife of Peter Lake, and apparently they've had Richard Cust to stay a few days ago with them in Suffolk as their guest, and there are a couple of photographs of Richard and Peter walking Sandy Solomon and Peter Lake's dog, really quite attractive, actually, in the way.      The other thing I've been thinking about is really how to treat the teleology in Conrad Russell's work, The Fall of the British Monarchies. Russell set himself up, certainly from the mid-1970s, as the apostle of criticism, as far as Whig and Marxist history was concerned. But, if you look at these accounts, say, of the short Parliament of April and May 1640, you can see there are all sorts of pointers to the future outcome of allegiance during ...
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