British Archives

Anzac Guerrillas – Podcast

by History Guild | Oct 31, 2025 | Military History | 0

When the Germans took thousands of Allied prisoners during the catastrophic Greek campaign of 1941, a handful of Australian soldiers escaped from prison trains in occupied Yugoslavia. What awaited them was not passage home, but a brutal underground war where the fate of a nation was at stake.

Told through the eyes of two of the Australian escapees – mineworker Ross Sayers and storeman Ronald Jones – Anzac Guerrillas is the incredible true story of how these men became resistance fighters, double agents and spies, evading the Nazis and exposing a group of genocidal collaborators.

Tutmania: How Ancient Egypt Defined the Roaring Twenties

by History Guild | Oct 15, 2025 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes

As the year 1922 dragged to a close, a weary public feared that it was doomed to die in doldrums. On the harrowing heels of World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic came a “summer journalistically so dull that an English farmer’s report of a gooseberry the size of a crabapple achieved the main news pages of the London metropolitan dailies.” One Lord Carnarvon remembered that “the public was in a state of boredom with news of reparations, conferences, and mandates, and craved for some new topic of conversation.”

The Irish Rising that shaped Australia

by History Guild | Oct 13, 2025 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
Even though a rebellion in Dublin might seem relatively minor in the grand scheme of things,” says Professor of Irish Studies at Notre Dame, Declan Kiberd, “it would actually be the pin piercing the heart of the imperial giant.

Life in an Australian field hospital in the Med during WW2

by History Guild | Oct 9, 2025 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes

In our documentation of eyewitness accounts of Australians in the Med during WW II, we have mainly focused on the experiences of frontline troops and sailors, men who faced enemy fire and worse. What about people a little farther back from the front, those who took care of the wounded?

Karl Muller and the fatal lemon

by History Guild | Oct 6, 2025 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Britain had been wary of foreign agents operating within its shores in the run up to the First World War, and the Secret Service Bureau – now commonly known as MI5 – had been established in 1909. It had found great success rounding up German spies when the conflict broke out. Nonetheless, it was vigilant that enemy operatives might attempt to send reports on Britain’s military and economy back home.

Napoleon’s bicentenary: why celebrating the French emperor has become so controversial

by History Guild | Sep 23, 2025 | Military History, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Napoleon Bonaparte may have died 200 years ago, but the vast ramifications of his rule can still be felt – and not only in France. This year marks the last in a series of bicentenaries since 1969, the 200th anniversary of his birth, but the chance to give the most famous emperor in French history another send-off is proving distinctly tricky – and not only because of COVID-19 restrictions.

From Captain Cook to the First Fleet: how Botany Bay was chosen over Africa as a new British penal colony

by History Guild | Sep 17, 2025 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
After Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage in 1770, the east coast of Australia was drawn on European maps of the globe for the first time. Yet, in terms of European contact with the continent, there was an 18-year lull in between Cook’s 1770 landings and the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.

Love Thy Neighbour: The Importance of Guest Rights in Medieval England

by History Guild | Sep 15, 2025 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
In almost every country in the modern world, although some more than others, various institutions, laws and social norms protect travellers. Yet the institutions such as the courts and the government, or the enforcing bodies such as the police, have not always existed.

Confessions from the Cambridge Five: a file release from MI5

by History Guild | Aug 25, 2025 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
Over 100 Security Service (MI5) files are being released today covering a wide range of subjects and individuals. Most notably, the files offer fresh perspectives on notorious members of the Cambridge Five spy ring, namely Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby and John Cairncross.

Wars of the Roses: how the French meddled in this very English conflict

by History Guild | Aug 11, 2025 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
The Wars of the Roses are normally portrayed as a series of battles between two warring houses, York and Lancaster, over who was rightly king of England. However, they were about much more than that. In many ways, the wars were really about standards of government.

The story of Nancy Wake

by History Guild | Aug 4, 2025 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
Nancy Wake (1912–2011) was an agent for the Special Operations Executive and the most wanted woman in France during the Second World War. Dubbed the ‘White Mouse’ by the Nazis, she was the one who always got away.