This Month in History
An English History Calendar

I love exploring historical sites and ancient buildings when nobody else is around. That way, I have time to imagine what took place over the years, picture the people who walked the courtyards and corridors and wonder what I would have done had I stood beside them. For me, it's a link back into the past that brings history alive.

And in the same way do I like to look at a calendar to find out what happened today or this month in history.

For longer than I can remember, October 14th stood for 1066 and the Battle of Hastings and August 22nd marked the end of the Wars of the Roses, just as May 8th commemorates the end of World War II or December 24th marks the birth of Jesus Christ.

In this Month in History section, I'd like to spin this out a bit, by offering you a calendar of English history to explore.

I'll start with the dates and events that are familiar to many, but I'm sure I'll find birthdays, battles and occurrences that may be new to you.

As I'm sort of ignoring chronology, I'm hoping that this calendar will be a beautiful jumble of snippets of history, of bits of information that amuse or surprise ... and maybe inspire you to dig a bit further.

English history has never been so much fun!

My Sources

Even someone as nutty about English history as I am does not have all these dates and events at one's fingertips. So where, you might wonder, did I find them all? And are they really true?

Yes, they're certainly true in the sense that I didn't make them up. Some came from my numerous notes, collected over the years, others I found amongst the covers of old and not so old books. If you're interested, here's a bit of a list:

David Hilliam's Monarchs, Murders and Mistresses is a pirate chest of well-known and quirky dates. Every time you dive into it, you'll find something that you didn't know before or something that prompts you to investigate a little more.

Christopher Winn's I Never Knew That About England has amused me ever since I was given it. Organised by county, it recounts just the little incidents that make history real for me.