Blizzards and books on the history reading party

This year’s fifteen History and joint schools finalists battled through snowstorms to get to their reading party in Cornwall.

The books under discussion ranged widely in time and space. Women in Roman art, Kings Cnut and Æthelred and late medieval English towns occupied one end of the spectrum. Racial segregation in the USA, the comparative history of empires, 20th-century international movements and Europe since 1989 brought us up to the present day. The Reformation in Poland and the material culture of early modern Europe filled in the middle ground. And in between seminars the snow on the moors provided some spectacular walking.