1815-1914

The British Empire

About Me

How to contact me


Please contact me by using the contact form below



My Professional Career

I am a retired History teacher who spent most of my teaching career as Head of History in a large comprehensive school in West Sussex where I taught all ages and periods of British and World History. In the last few years of my career I introduced topics on the British Empire to various year groups  and since retirement have developed further my interest in the British Empire.


Visits to the former Empire

I now spend a good deal of my time reading and researching the British Empire and when possible  visit places associated with its history. In recent years I have visited Lucknow, Kolkata, Delhi and Cawnpore in India, Malta, and South Africa, and most recently have visited a number of  battlefield sites in South Africa including Spion Kop and Isandhlwana . Where applicable I illustrate my talks with material I have acquired on these trips.


Previous Talks

In recent  years, I have given talks on ‘General Garnet Wolseley, ‘The Boer War’,  ‘Cecil Rhodes’ and ‘The Development of the British Empire during the reign  of Victoria’.


Kipling

I am a member of the Kipling Society and am happy to give talks on Kipling’s Imperialism’ and Kipling’s Rottingdean Years’. Kipling was regarded  in the late c19th as Britain’s Imperial Poet and Imperial Prophet and there are several pieces on the website assessing his significance.

 I am happy to give a talk on any other aspect of the British Empire 1815-1914, given sufficient notice. I live in Brighton and can travel to any venue in Sussex and parts of Surrey.


My talks are delivered using powerpoint and I usually bring a selection of books to display for any interval. I have my own data projector so all  I need is a screen.


Interested in booking a talk?

If you are interested in booking me for a talk for your group, please contact me using the contact details on the right.



Peter Crowhurst - the author and editor of ‘British Empire 1815-1914’.

Review of my talk to

 the West Sussex Archives Society

In September I gave a presentation on Olaf Caroe to the West Sussex Archives Society at their Steyning Conference. The review of that talk in ‘The Reviewer’, newsletter of the Society, said that: Peter Crowhurst’s fascinating lecture on Olaf Caroe and the Great Game brought home to us the immediacy of the running  of the British Empire even in the rural and peaceful depths of Sussex. For three decades Steyning provided the home for a senior colonial administrator, Sir Olaf Caroe who had played a major role in the government of India in the quarter century up to 1947. The Great Game is a term that now sounds melodramatic or even comic - but it represented a major serious issue of foreign policy and remained a major preoccupation for the rest of Caroe’s life