The Historical Association

During the European witch craze, visual art played a powerful role in shaping belief in witches. The printing press allowed images of witchcraft to circulate widely, amplifying fear and suspicion.

In the her article in the latest edition of The Historian magazine, historian Natasha Brockman explores how such imagery did more than illustrate witchcraft: it helped create it, teaching people what witches looked like, what they did, and why their destruction seemed necessary.

Learn more in the latest edition of The Historian focussing on Visual Arts: https://www.history.org.uk/publications/categories/301/resource/11431/the-historian-169-visual-arts

The Historian is the HA’s flagship general interest magazine and is free to HA Historian members.

The latest issue of Primary History brings together voices from across the history community – sharing what’s working in classrooms right now.
From rethinking familiar topics like the Great Fire of London, to using fiction, local history, and new research to spark curiosity, it’s full of ideas shaped by teachers’ real experiences.
At its heart, it’s a community that shares generously – challenging, supporting and inspiring one another to keep history vibrant and meaningful for young learners. Take a look!

2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence. To reflect on this pivotal moment in global history, our new webinar series examines the ways in which American culture has shaped ideas, literature and society beyond its borders.

Sessions include:

✒️Touring Jim Crow America: Black writers’ experiences of the South

🕵️‍♂️ Hardboiled Style: Hammett, Chandler and Mid-Century America

📖 When American literature went abroad

🛸 Everything is connected: Conspiracy theories in American history

📜 Phillis Wheatley Peters, her poetry, and her response to the American Revolution

All sessions take place from 5-6.30pm and will be hosted online via Zoom, with the first session starting on Tuesday 30 June.

Sessions are free for members and available for a one-off fee for non-members.

For more details and to register visit: https://historical-association.cademy.io/ha-webinar-series-american-culture

What classroom approaches are really helping pupils engage in history?

Often, it’s the ones that get them involved, not just listening, but thinking and exploring:

Handling artefacts and asking ‘what can this tell us?’

Starting with a big enquiry question

Giving space for discussion, curiosity, and speculation

Comparing sources and building ideas together

These kinds of approaches bring history to life - helping pupils develop confidence, curiosity, and real understanding.

HA resources are full of ideas like these, shared by teachers across the country.

What’s working well in your classroom at the moment?

Introducing the final historical father in our mini series of posts for Father’s Day: William Jackson Smart (1842–1919)

William Jackson Smart, a US Civil War Veteran was the inspiration for the creation of Father’s Day in the USA. A devoted single father who raised his 14 children alone after his wife died, Smart’s love and care for his family inspired his daughter Sonora Smart Dodd to lobby her local church to create an annual Father’s Day.

The first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington. Eventually the idea of a day honouring fathers was embraced by the entire US and by 1972 the US government established a permanent national observance of Father’s Day to be held on the 3rd Sunday of June each year.

While Father’s Day is not celebrated on the same day each year across the world, it is observed in more than 112 countries. Today Father’s Day is more than just a day set aside for honouring biological fathers, and has become a day for celebrating fatherhood in all its forms, the influence of fathers in society and the importance of father figures in people’s lives.

Happy Father’s Day!

Today we explore another father figure from history: Janusz Korczak (1878/1879 -1942)

Korczak was a Polish Jewish paediatrician, educator and children’s author who was the director of the Dom Sierot orphanage in Warsaw, Poland and he oversaw the care of the Jewish orphans who lived there.

During WWII the Germans created the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1940 and the Dom Sierot orphanage was forced to move to the ghetto. Korczak moved in with the children and kept the orphanage running in the most difficult circumstances. Together with the children and the staff, Korczak staged plays and concerts for the ghetto inhabitants.

In early August 1942, German soldiers came to take the orphans to the Treblinka extermination camp and while Korczak himself had actually been offered sanctuary from deportation, he chose to accompany the orphans to the camp and certain death, saying ‘You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this.’

As we approach Father’s Day this Sunday we will be exploring three different historical father figures over the next three days…

Today we examine: Sir Thomas Moore (1478 – 1535)

Sir Thomas Moore was an English lawyer, social philosopher, theologian and Renaissance humanist who served Henry VIII as Lord Chancellor from 1529 to1532.

Moore had 4 children of his own, an adopted daughter and was guardian to two further children. He insisted upon giving his daughters the same classical education as his son which was an unusual attitude for a time in which girls were traditionally less educated than boys. He wrote affectionate letters to his children whenever he was apart from them and both championed and took pride in his daughters’ academic achievements.

You champion history in your school, and with the HA, we’re here to champion you too.

Being part of HA membership means you’re connected to a whole network of teachers and subject leaders across schools and Trusts. It’s a space to share ideas, learn from others, and see what’s working in different classrooms.

Whether it’s picking up a new approach, hearing how another school tackled a challenge, or getting inspiration from a Quality Mark leader, you’re not figuring things out on your own.

Because with the HA, you’re part of a community.

And whatever you’re working through, chances are someone else has been there and shared what they’ve learned.

Join a network of thousands of other primary history teachers and educators with HA primary membership: https://www.history.org.uk/membership/info/primary

This week is Refugee Week.

There are over 29 million refugees around the world, and more than 100 million people have been displaced. The majority are children.

Historically refugee movements are nothing new. In times of war, famine and climate crisis, people have long been forced to leave their homes, villages, towns and nations. Sometimes there is time to gather belongings; at other times people leave with only what they can carry, travelling with those beside them.

Refugees do not choose their status. For many, survival is the only priority. In time, they may face further difficult decisions – whether to return and rebuild, to establish a life in a new place, or to wait in uncertainty. Making any choice when stability has been lost requires immense courage. That is why ‘courage’ is the theme for Refugee Week 2026.

To explore some of the HA’s content on the history of refugees visit: https://www.history.org.uk/historian/news/4545/refugee-week-2026