Introduction to History Online Course

An Introduction to studying History with historian, author and television presenter Alexandra Churchill.

This four week, online course, designed for people who haven’t formally studied since school, or who have been out of education for years, will push your boundaries beyond that of a passionate consumer, and begin to show you how history is written. By the end, you’ll be forming your own opinions, picking out the good from the bad, and leaping straight to the bibliography like a nerd with everything you pick up!

I want this to be accessible, and so the cost is just £40. For full paid up members of the Great War Group, the price is a reduced £25.

How will it work?

The course will last for four weeks in January 2026, and take place on a Wednesday evening. I’ll talk for about an hour, and then we’ll have a group discussion until we run out of steam about an hour later.

I will assign tasks for you to try out what you’re learning, but there’s no detention if you choose not to play and just want to lurk on the fringes. If you do want to submit something, please do so via email by noon on the day of the appropriate lecture.

I guess, you’ll get out what you put in, and that is especially true of the reading. I’ve kept the list short, but if you’re engaging with the material, you will definitely have a better course experience. I’ve tried to stick to books that are readily available for very little second hand. Likewise, I recommend attending live, but if you can’t, you’ll be able to view the lecture part of the evening later on.

What will we study?

Here’s how your course will break down. It’s me, so in a completely predictable move, we’ll be focusing on 20th Century conflict to guide us through the material. And there will be French people.

Wednesday 7th January: What is History?: The Good, The Bad, and The Fugly.

First of all we have to have an introductory look at the study of history and for this, we need evidence. To that end, we’ll be spending a lot of time this week looking at various types of sources available to us, and how to assess them.

Wednesday 14th January: Down the Rabbit Hole: Unpicking the Big Picture

Few things are more intimidating than a giant, geo-political clusterf*ck and trying to make sense of it all. So let’s just dive in and tackle one of the most daunting of all time. This week, we’ll be trying to make sense of the outbreak of the First World War.

Wednesday 21st January: Why Bad Things Happen.

Describing how things happen is one thing. Explaining why is another entirely, and you need to know how to do both. This week, we’ll be looking at a catastrophe, and trying to begin working out who was responsible. Few things scream catastrophe in our time period more than the capitulation of France in 1940, so buckle up, there’s a lot of hand-wringing to be done for this one.

Wednesday 28th January: Tackling Controversy: Start Forming Your Own Opinions

The study of history is littered with flashpoints which have people screaming at each other for decades on end. But when historians have interpreted the same evidence to draw hugely divergent opinions, just how to do you begin to start making sense of it all to form your own opinion? For the purposes of this study, we’re going to be looking at the old trope of lions led by donkeys. The idea that mindless First World War generals callously and incompetently sent a generation of Britain’s youth to their deaths.