News

April 2011 Professor Arthur Burns will be appearing in Tony Palmer’s film Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter, to be screened on BBC Four, Sunday 24 April 2011 at 21:00. Tony Palmer is one of the leading directors of music documentaries and historical drama films in the world - he has won over forty international prizes for his work (he is the only person to have won television's most coveted award, the Prix d'Italia, twice), as well as numerous BAFTA (British Academy of Film & Television) and EMMY nominations and awards. Professor Arthur Burns will be discussing the key place of Conrad Noel, the ‘red vicar of Thaxted’ (the subject of his current research), in Holst’s life at the time he wrote The Planets and much of his choral music.

April 2011 Congratulations to BA History student Chibundu Onuzo, who will publish her first novel, The Spider King’s Daughter, with Faber early next year. In her words, 'I started writing The Spider King’s Daughter when I was seventeen. Last week, almost three years later and halfway to forty, I sent in the final draft of said novel to my editor at Faber. Writing the first draft of the novel was fun. The sense of accomplishment I felt when I typed THE END has not been matched, though I suspect it will be surpassed when I hold the hard copy in my hands. After I found an agent, I edited the novel for six months before we agreed it was ready to send to a publisher. I signed a two book deal with Faber in February 2010 and since then my editor Sarah Savitt has suggested several ways for me to improve the book. Very many drafts, some moments of frustration and a few editorial lunches later, the novel is as good as I can make it as this stage in my life so I’m happy to wave goodbye to the manuscript. I thank God for the relative smoothness with which the book has advanced to publication. I am looking forward to seeing The Spider King’s Daughter on shelves and hopefully, in people’s hands.' Video of Chibundu Onuzo speaking about her forthcoming novel.

April 2011 Congratulations to Dr Anne Goldgar, who has been awarded the 2011 Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award for Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, presented on 14 April 2011 by the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH). The Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award was established by the SAH Board in 2005 to recognize the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of landscape architecture or garden design and is awarded annually. Named for SAH Past President and landscape historian Elisabeth MacDougall, the award honors the late historian's role in developing this field of study. This is the second major prize awarded to Dr Goldgar for her book on Tulipmania in 1630s Netherlands, which was awarded the prestigious Leo Gershoy Award by the American Historical Association (AHA) in 2008 for the best book on European seventeenth- and eighteenth-century history. “Goldgar tells us at the start of her excellent debunking book: ‘Most of what we have heard of [tulipmania] is not true.’. . . She tells a new story.”—Simon Kuper, Financial Times.

April 2011 On 1 April 2011, the Department of History presented its annual Medieval Latin play. The play was the Ludus de Antichristo (Play of the Antichrist), performed in the original Latin in the King's Chapel, Strand Campus. This was the sixth such event, and the first to be performed with an original score (composed by Alessia Mankovskaya, performed by members of King’s College Choir) and English surtitles. The performance was widely publicised both within the College, and to historians and classicists throughout the UK, and the cast performed to a full house. Read more.

March 2011 On 29 March 2011 ten King’s staff and students were honoured for their big ideas at the 2010-11 King’s College London Graduate Business Plan Competition finals. Congratulations go to History PhD student Adam Crymble, who was on the winning team along with Mona Sandkühler and Mark Taylor. The team was awarded the Lion’s Den Development prize of £7,000 to take forward their real business idea MyScholar, which aims to provide online, personalised, one-on-one maths tutoring to students across the UK. MyScholar also won £1,000 worth of market research services from Marketest Ltd to help them develop their new venture. Read more.

March 2011 On Friday 5 March 2011 Buckingham Palace confirmed that Queen Elizabeth II will visit the Republic of Ireland in May 2011 - the first British monarch to go there since the partition of Ireland. As part of this historic moment in Anglo-Irish relations Charles and Camilla were invited to the Irish Embassy, where they met the Department's Dr Ian McBride. Photos of the event have been posted to facebook.

February 2011 Scholarships for MA Medieval History Applicants who apply to the MA Medieval History programme before 17:00GMT on 15 June 2011 will automatically be considered for a £6,000 scholarship.

February 2011 Scholarship for MA Nineteenth-Century Studies Applicants who apply to the MA Nineteenth-Century Studies programme before 17:00GMT on 15 June 2011 will automatically be considered for a £6,000 scholarship.

January 2011 On Monday 31 January 2011, the book launch of Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives, edited by the department's AdboolKarim Vakil, took place in the House of Commons Grand Committee Room. The event was hosted by the Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP, Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, and jointly organised by the Research and Documentation Committee of the Muslim Council of Britain and Hurst publishers. The book launch provided the occasion for two panels and a Q&A session chaired by AbdoolKarim Vakil and was attended by over one hundred invited academics, civil society groups and parlamentarians. Read more.

January 2011 First-year PhD student Michael Humphries has published an article in the journal Historical Research, ‘The eyes of an empire’: the Legion of Frontiersmen, 1904–14, fist published online on 28 January 2011.

January 2011 Suzanne Desrochers, a PhD student in the Department, has published her first novel Bride of New France with Penguin Group (Canada), published 18 January 2011. Read author interview.

January 2011 Professor Richard Vinen has been awarded a prestigious Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. This will pay for him to be relieved of all teaching duties (except for the supervision of doctoral students) for two years from October 2011. He will use this period to research and write a book on National Service (i.e. on compulsory military service in Britain from 1945 to 1963).

January 2011 Congratulations to Study Abroad student Michelle Caley, who has won a King's Study Abroad Excellence Award. Michelle took modules in History at King's, and describes her experience: "I genuinely loved every single class I took."