This is the blog of Martin Johnes, Professor of Modern History at Swansea University.
Recent blogs
Why history matters
A short video I made for a Welsh Government event about history in the Curriculum for Wales.

A brief history of work Christmas parties
This is an extract from Martin Johnes, Christmas and the British: A Modern History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) One reason for the ebbing of work was excitement over Christmas parties. These were not new phenomenon – some late nineteenth-century factories had held them for example – but they undoubtedly increased in number in the middle of the twentieth century and by … Continue reading “A brief history of work Christmas parties”
Anglo-Welsh football relations: a history
This article was first published in Tom Gibbons & Dominic Malcolm (eds), Sport and English National Identity in a ‘Disunited Kingdom’ (Routledge, 2017) All national identities owe something to relations with an ‘other’. As Linda Colley (1994: 6) put it, ‘men and women decide who they are by reference to who and what they are … Continue reading “Anglo-Welsh football relations: a history”