Today over 140 countries and territories participate in the award scheme.
Dr Kathryn Bates is a graduate of archaeology and history. She has excavated across the world as an archaeologist, and tutored medieval history at Leicester University. She joined the administrative team at Oxford Open Learning twelve years ago. Alongside her distance learning work, Dr Bates is a bestselling novelist, and an itinerant creative writing tutor for primary school children.
The history of the silver screen
During the First World War, the cinema became increasingly important, not just for morale, but for keeping everyone informed about world news.
It’s Sci-Fi, not Fantasy!
The world of science fiction and fantasy is varied, and often the genres are lumped together in libraries and bookshops.
The Suffragette Movement: A Violent Campaign
The Suffragettes had a policy to go on hunger strike once they were in prison, so that the government would be shamed if they died in custody.
The Start of the Suffragette Movement
“The majority of men in Parliament believed that women simply didn’t have the right kind of brains to understand how Parliament worked.”
The Hobbit
First and second editions of The Hobbit are extremely rare. At auction they rarely go for less than £20,000 a copy.
The Mabinogion
These eleven tales are all concerned with the lives of various Welsh royal families and the gods of a pre-Christian mythology.
Where was Camelot?
Arthur is considered by many to have been a Romano-British leader fighting the Anglo-Saxon invaders.
The Early Years of Mary Shelley
Shelley could often be found reading, sometimes by her mother’s grave, and it wasn’t long before she began to write stories of her own.
The story of Nelson Mandela
Alongside South Africa’s President de Klerk, Mandela helped to dismantle the institutions of apartheid, an act for which they shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.