Britain Explained (By Americans)

This is quite an interesting video attempting to explain to Americans the relationship between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and what makes up "The United Kingdom". It starts off simply enough but begins to get quite complicated once you start adding Jersey, Guernsey, the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar! If you would like a further venn diagram (!) to explain this click here.

Belgium Trip 2011: Map and Useful Links

View Nonsuch Belgium Trip in a larger map

Above is a map which shows the main sites that we will be visiting during the Year 10 trip to the battlefields of Flanders on 11 and 12 March. (We recommend that you click on "View Nonsuch Belgium Trip" to see it more clearly. The blue flags represents places we will visit on Friday and the green ones those on Saturday. More details for the trip will appear on the blog shortly.

If you would like to read more about what took place around Ypres during the First World War, this site is an excellent general guide. This gives more specific information about the first battle of Ypres (plus information on the other battles: (second, third, more on the third.)

The Commonwealth War Graves Commisson website is ideal for searching for those who lost their lives during the fighting.
The Long Long Trail site is excellent for more detailed searches for particular individuals and family members involved in World War One.

Slavery Map

The New York Times have published an interactive map of slavery in the southern United States in 1860, based on the census taken in that year. It is fascinating to see where the densest areas of slavery (over 80% of the population in that area) were; Abraham Lincoln regularly referred to it regularly and the map can even be seen in a portrait of his cabinet in 1864, when he read the emancipation proclamation. The map forms part of a timeline project the paper will be doing, marking the 150th anniversary the war. Blog posts will be published regularly on the anniversary of particular events, using material from the papers archives and comments from historians. You can follow the timeline here.

Our Map

The map at the bottom of our page is about to be archived, and we will start with a fresh one for the next academic year. The picture above is therefore a map of all of our readers' locations for 2009-10 (click on it for more detail). Nonsuch HP has been very excited to discover that the blog has been read across the world, with our favourite locations being Kazakstan, Rwanda and, in the top spot, the Palestinian Territory. We were also excited to get a reader from Brazil this week - our first in South America! We would like to take this opportunity to send thanks to all our readers, at Nonsuch, in Britain or around the world, and hope they have a very enjoyable summer (or winter if you are south of the equator!)

Science and Maps

There is plenty of good history on TV at the moment. Tonight BBC2 begins showing its flagship programme "The Story of Science", ambitiously showing the history of science. The notes on the website state that it is "a tale of courage and of fear, of hope and disaster, of persistence and success", interweaving "great forces of history – revolutions, voyages of discovery and artistic movements – with practical, ingenious inventions and the dogged determination of experimenters and scientists". Tonight's episode focuses in particular on the growing realisation that the earth rotated around the sun, and not vice versa, and the impact of this on society, religion and culture.

Meanwhile BBC4 is showing several programmes about the impact of maps on history and their utility as sources for the period they represent. "Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession" examines maps from the Ancient World to Google Earth, and shows how they were used as tools to project political power and propaganda, such as the Romans' maps of the newest parts of the Empire that they had conquered. Meanwhile the "Beauty of Maps" does exactly what it says on the tin, looking in wonder at particular maps and examining some of their secrets. It has a special website where you can examine some of these for yourself.

If you watch any of these programmes, please post a review either as a comment below or in an email to us. We would love to hear what you think, or if you have any other recommendations.

Battle of Hastings Map

Stand by for the Battle of Hastings in HP Society on Tuesday (Room 103 at lunchtime - bring outdoor clothes) In preparation for this, here is a map of the battlefield prepared on Google Maps (click on each shape and arrow for more information). The creator of the map is a military historian who as plenty more to say on the subject in his blog.

View Battle of Hastings_opening disposition in a larger map