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If you click here you will get to a 45 minute In Our Time broadcast from Radio 4. In it Melvyn Bragg discusses the significance of the assassination of Alexander II.

An excellent discussion that will help you a lot with those turning points in government essays.

“On 1st March 1881, the Russian Tsar, Alexander II, was travelling through the snow to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. An armed Cossack sat with the coach driver, another six Cossacks followed on horseback and behind them came a group of police officers in sledges. It was the day that the Tsar, known for his liberal reforms, had signed a document granting the first ever constitution to the Russian people.But his journey was being watched by a group of radicals called ‘Narodnaya Volya’ or ‘The People’s Will’. On a street corner near the Catherine Canal, they hurled the first of their bombs to halt the Tsar’s iron-clad coach. When Alexander ignored advice and ventured out onto the snow to comfort his dying Cossacks, he was killed by another bomber who took his own life in the blast.

Why did they kill the reforming Tsar?

What was the political climate that inspired such extreme acts?

And could this have been the moment that the Russian state started an inexorable march towards revolution?

With Orlando Figes, Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London; Dominic Lieven, Professor of Russian Government, London School of Economics; Catriona Kelly, Professor of Russian, Oxford University.”

Have a listen and see what you think.

Mr Kydd.

Year Twelve,

As we move to the Mid Tudor source work, can I strongly recommend that you watch this  excellent series on Lady Jane Grey from the wonderful Helen Castor – one of my favourite historians. It is particularly helpful for the stability of the monarchy and rebellions units. It is “an epic tale of dynastic rivalry, intrigue and betrayal” for the first reigning queen of England.

Enjoy…

Mr Kydd.

As you may long have suspected – perhaps everything that I  have taught you is incorrect. See what you think about the latest revision of the causes of the Black Death.

The BBC link

The National Geographic link

This human lice argument would certainly seem to address that old question of how the Bubonic Plague reached parts of the British Isles (such as the Scottish islands) where we know it was too cold for the black rats.

See what you think.

Mr Kydd.

A nice bit of enrichment for those of you studying the Russia course.  The BBC’s Steve Rosenberg travelled across Russia to find out what Russians today think about the October Revolution.

See what you think.

Mr Kydd.