Six of the Best 894

Alan Rice finds Black American troops were welcome in Britain during the second world war, but Jim Crow wasn't: "The pub was a place of sanctuary for black troops where they mingled with, mainly friendly, locals, and where the segregation many had to endure in the American South was thankfully absent."

Schoolgirl debating societies gave girls a political education in the years before women's suffrage, argues Helen Sunderland.

"A young miner who was a member of the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society in Northumberland, and who was killed by a fall of coal in 1899, died with a translation of Thucydides in his pocket, the page turned down at Pericles’ funeral speech." Edith Hall shows that a classical education was never just for the elite.

George Eliot's 'provincial' novels have much to teach today’s divided Britain, says Kathryn Hughes.

Fifty years on, Michael Hann celebrates the Fairport Convention album Liege & Leaf.

Dan Roberts explores the short Football League career of Middlesbrough Ironopolis.