In April of this year, I sat down to interview Edward Chancellor, who offered me his view on the response to COVID-19 as a financial historian, which challenged more mainstream ideas around lockdown. As I sat at my desk to discuss the topic (the interview was conducted via Zoom, of course), Chancellor’s ideas around the influence of behavioural psychology on the global reaction, stood out to me. In drawing parallels between the disease cycle and financial cycle, Chancellor touches on crowd behaviour and cognitive dissonance to explain the reaction to COVID-19, and why extrapolation errors are so dangerous. We also discussed Johnson’s government’s imitative behaviour, and the importance of truth-seeking.

Rosemary Horton is perhaps one of the most interesting people I have met, and yet spent most of her life not moving far from our borough, Merton. She’s lived here for 60 years, and in Wimbledon Village for three decades, where she is now living in an idyllic cottage. Rosemary was a teacher her whole life, mostly around Wimbledon working at schools like Bishop Gilpin, Wimbledon Park and even running her own nursery for years in Spencer Hill. Some months ago, in the depth of Autumn lockdown last year, I asked Rosemary, now in her 80s, if I could interview her to talk about the COVID crisis and so went in her garden to ask a few questions while standing a few metres away.

An informal interview with the outgoing head girl

The unabridged version of the interview published in the 2021 print edition of Unconquered Peaks

Our wise and wondrous WHS history department have been sitting down to discuss black history in the past few weeks, in recognition that February is the USA’s Black History month. The first instalment of these panels was sent out to you all in podcast format before half term. If that has slipped your mind, here is a transcript of the whole podcast. Hopefully you find it informative and enjoyable, and it whets your appetite for the next instalment, where we’ll hear the takes of several of our A-level historians.