History Matters: This is the first in a new occasional series of articles on the RHS blog which show how history can help us to understand our present times. In this first article, Nadine Rossol (University of Essex) explores the power of flags as political symbols in Weimar Germany. As Nadine argues, contests over the use and display of flags have long histories and are significant. Flag conflicts are about emotions, agency and identity. They are typically blunt and intense, going to the heart of citizen politics. Historical examples, as in the case of 1920s Germany, provide us with context for and perspective on present-day manifestations.

In this post, Karen Smyth shares her recent experience of introducing medieval heritage trails to students on a Medical Humanities MA pathway. In moving beyond the traditional discipline of History, what are the challenges and opportunities in teaching not only a cross-disciplinary but also a cross-sector cohort of students? How might the Creative Health agenda, now emerging in the heritage sector, enable medieval history to play a central role in the discipline of Medical Humanities? Karen shares her teaching experiences which were made possible with the recent award, by the Society, of a Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowship. RHS Teaching Fellowships support the development of new teaching practices in History in Higher Education.

In this post, Jonathan Willis introduces his new article, ‘“your poore distressed suppliant”: ‘Madness’, Emotion and the Archive in Early Modern England’, recently published in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'. The article focusses on the British Library's MS Lansdowne 99, a collection of letters written to the government of Elizabethan England and annotated at several points in their history to describe their authors or contents as ‘crazy’, ‘mad’, ‘frantic’, and ‘insane’. The article explores the relationships between archives, letters and emotion in early modern England. Jonathan argues that understanding their distress not only brings us closer to marginalised people in the past, but grants us a richer knowledge of past societies and the experience of being human in them. The article is now available Open Access.