
Opinion Articles
H&P encourages historians to use their expertise to shed light on issues of the day. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece for publication, please see our editorial guidelines. We currently have 342 Opinion Articles listed by date and they are all freely searchable by theme, author or keyword.
Open diplomacy? New embassies and old on the Thames
As the new US embassy is unveiled in London, Carl Bridge and Eileen Chanin look at a historical example of a truly “open” embassy building.
Read MoreAre employment rates of disabled people “at the highest level since records began”?
Lucy Delap shows that the history of disabled employment may not be the steady upward progression the government would like to suggest
Read MoreBrexit and the great British breakfast
James P. Bowen and John Martin identify the agricultural sector's challenges – seasonal fruit-pickers are the best publicised part of the problem, but the permanent workforce will be affected too.
Read MoreBritain’s hundred-year housing crisis: a century of uneven spending
Peter Shapely shows how housing policy initiatives since 1919 have been sunk by the same problem of investment disappearing in lean periods, and suggests housing should be a basic constant spending priority alongside health.
Read MoreThe 2017 General Election in history
As the dust settles on the outcome of the 2017 General Election, Martin Farr looks at other key moments of electoral uncertainty and uneasy coalition.
Read MoreAfter Grenfell, what can we learn from the housing policies of the 1970s?
David Ellis suggests the 30-year-old consensus on what makes for politically acceptable housing policy may be breaking down in the way of the Grenfell disaster – opening the door to policies last employed in the 1970s.
Read MoreLessons from the Grenfell Tower disaster: the historic failures of the state in fire safety
The role of the state in fire safety is not a settled matter – Shane Ewen shows how improved fire safety has tended to follow a preventable disaster in the past, so the lessons for policy makers, following a recent period of deregulation, should be clear.
Read MoreThe Blitz can show us how to respond to a tragedy
Henry Irving shows that government was willing to learn lessons in 1940 about its own unprepared response to destruction and homelessness – can the government of today learn the same lessons when responding to tragedy?
Read MoreThe Grenfell fire and the destruction of the British council estate
Sam Wetherell shows how the original unified vision of council estate architects was picked apart by housing legislation in the 1980s and 1990s, resulting in the patchwork of managing bodies we see today.
Read MorePrince Harry and the history of mental health stigma policy
Chris Millard traces the history of policy designed to tackle stigma, contextualising both “celebrity” action and the mooted scrapping of the Mental Health Act 1983.
Read More