If I ever thought that history teacher Twitter was a bubble, history teacher Facebook reconfirms it every day. These groups are exceptionally helpful for sharing ideas, tips, resources and advice given by exam boards, but I must admit that I find them quite draining at times. People complain a lot (I get it: people are worried) and unlike Twitter, I can’t just unfollow people. I don’t go on social media to be angry and depressed (though I fully support anybody else’s desire to). I have a strict rule instead, that I don’t engage apart from to add positively, with a resource or a question for discussion.

After reading a couple of comments about the content of the new GCSE, I hopped onto Twitter to find out what people were reading to prep for it. With A-level, I’ve found that the more I read, the quicker and more efficiently I can get through the topics, but traditionally I’ve found that teachers don’t do a great deal of reading around the GCSE.

Although this was reflected in a couple of replies, I was surprised by how many people got back to me to share what they’d been reading. Here is almost everything that almost everyone recommended to me. It has been quite difficult to put all these into one post, so I have attempted to categorise. I haven’t read a fraction of them, so can’t vouch personally – do leave a comment if you can, or if I’ve missed something you love.

Thematic studies

Ian Mortimer’s Time Travellers series and Ten Centuries of Change both got a lot of praise. The former covers Medicine and Crime in varying levels of depth and are accessible enough to use with students as well. I heard Ian Mortimer speak at the BBC History festival in October and he was superb – he did an A-Z of Restoration England and he had exceptionally detailed subject knowledge for someone speaking with what seemed to be no notes.

Roy Porter also got a lot of love for Medicine reading.

America

Derek Reynolds’s Limits of Liberty and Hugh Brogan’s Penguin History of the USA were both mentioned a few times. I used these extensively for A-level and Brogan was good for the early stuff as well as the 20th century. Dee Reynolds’ American West and Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee were also popular for American West. Leuchtenburg got a mention: I really liked his Perils of Prosperity when I was teaching A-level Boom and Bust. The Story of Us was also recommended as a documentary series.

Normans

Deep breath for this one – Richard Kerridge recommended, “Marc Morris and David Bates for basic Normans. Lanfranc by McDonald. Leach’s the Schools of Medieval England. Morillo ‘Battle of Hastings’, Gillingham’s William ii. William the Conqueror by Maurice Ashley.” These are all completely unknown to me, although Marc Morris got a few mentions from other people. Kerridge must never sleep!

Podcasts

I’d never thought of looking up podcasts to brush up my subject knowledge but these are also very popular. The BBC’s In Our Time series was recommended by a couple of people.

People shared some book pictures with me, too. My favourite kind of picture.

I came away from this discussion much buoyed and reminded that, for the most part, history teachers love history. Many thanks to the following for engaging with my question:

@CAHumanities
@pickledhistory
@history_mrs
@LesleyMunro4
@HistoryRichK
@BenCollinge
@tinaturntables
@historycarlin
@danpo_
@26mxw
@doverbhistory
@swerupa
@historybreeze
@paulaloboworth
@justice2history
@bones_carmel
@SnelsonH
@MrSamPullan
@TeachGandT
@KLC_History