Haberdashers Askes Boys School

"Habs fostered individuality even when teaching the basics."
Peter Oppenheimer, Fellow, Christ Church College, Oxford

The History Department

History blog

There are seven full-time members of staff. The subject is a principal one in the school curriculum. Numbers taking the GCSE examination in the Year 11 average about 110 and the annual intake for the department’s A-Level courses in the Sixth Form normally exceeds 50.

The department is housed in a new suite of buildings with six teaching rooms, one of which incorporates a sizeable Sixth Form library, and a staff office. Equipment and resources include a wide range of audio-visual materials, televisions and VCRs in every room, six computers, four digital projectors and a selection of historical journals. Outside normal teaching time a history society meets, and several visits and field trips take place, including in recent years a Year 7 visit to Battle Abbey at Hastings, an annual field trip to the Somme and Ypres for the Year 10, a Year 9 trip to Paris, Year 11 trips to Berlin and Moscow / St. Petersburg and a Sixth Form trip to New York and Washington.

Hastings 2007 Agincourt 2007 World War I battlefields trip 2006

 

 

History at Haberdashers

At Key Stage 3, the National Curriculum is shadowed except for the omission of ‘The Romans’ and ‘The Era of the Second World War’. There is considerable emphasis on medieval and early modern English history in the first two years. In Year 9, we teach a composite course involving the French Revolution, Civil Rights in the United States and World War One.

In Years 10 and 11, the course is OCR Modern World History, with depth studies on Nazi Germany. The coursework consists of a project on the First World War to be submitted in Year 11.

In the Sixth Form there are three A-Level course with the OCR Board – an Early Modern option; a Modern option with European and British units; and a second Modern option with American units substituting for the European.

History Department Teachers

Roy Sloan

Joined the school in 1986 and has been Head of History since 1992. Graduate of Glasgow University, MA (1976) and PhD (1982). His doctorate subject was the Irish opposition to Daniel O’Connell, 1832-47, and he is the author of a biography of William Smith O’Brien (published 2000). Main historical interests: Ireland, the Italian Risorgimento, 19th century France.

Nicholas Saddington


Joined the school in 1993. Graduate of University of Ulster (1988), PhD student at Selwyn College, Cambridge (1989-93), researching the historiography of the English Civil War with particular reference to the work of Christopher Hill. Main historical interest: the history of ideas.

Alexander Simm


Joined the school in 1992. Graduated from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (1988). PGCE from the Education Department, Cambridge University (1992). Main areas of historical interest: the French Wars of Religion, Lord Liverpool and the German Army 1914-1945.

Stephen Clark


Joined the school in 2000. Graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1999. PGCE from the School of Education, Cambridge (2000). Co-author of Newton’s Tyranny (2000), an expose of the dark side of a flawed genius. Main areas of historical interest: the Soviet Union under Stalin and parliamentary politics in the reigns of George III and George IV.

Ian St John


Joined the school in 2000. Studied for a BA at the University of York and a D.Phil at Nuffield College, Oxford. He is the joint author of a biography of the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and worked as a researcher on the 1997 Nuffield Election study. Besides contemporary history, his special interest is in the political and economic history of 19th century Britain. His political biography of Benjamin Disraeli was published in 2005.
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Simon Hyde


Joined the school in 2003 as Deputy Head (Development). He studied history at Christ Church, Oxford (MA 1990; DPhil 1992) and at the University of Bonn. His principal research interest is mid-nineteenth-century Prussia, but he enjoys teaching all periods apart from seventeenth-century England. He examines at A level and for the IB

Deborah Rivlin


Joined the school in 2006 as Head of Junior School.  Graduate of Birmingham University (1997).  PGCE from the Institute of Education, London.  Main areas of historical interest: Tudor England, American history, and the history of law and order.