Essay competition:
Jung Chang and the Cultural Revolution
The subject of the 2024-25 sixth form essay prize is “Jung Chang and the Cultural Revolution”.
We are delighted to announced that Jung Chang herself will present the prizes at the awards ceremony next year.
Jung Chang’s book, Wild Swans, was an international sensation when it was published and has sold over 13 million copies around the world. The book tells much of the story of modern China through the lives of her grandmother, her mother and herself. She herself became a Red Guard but became sickened by what she was expected to do. Her mother was paraded in the streets and made to walk on her knees on broken grass.
The competition is to write an essay in which the experiences of her family and the overall story of the Cultural Revolution are both told.
Click on this button for more information.
Resources for schools
Ten books about totalitarianism
Ten books on totalitarianism: masterpieces, best-sellers or both.
Surviving two invasions
Daniel Finkelstein describes how one side of his family survived the Holocaust and the other survived the Gulag.
Essay competition: repression in pre-war nazi Germany
The deadline for the 2023-2024 sixth form history essay prize has now passed. We received 125 entries from students at over 60 schools.
The results have now been announced.
The Nazi ‘Pacification’ of Poland
From The Devil’s Alliance by Roger Moorhouse
Warsaw Ghetto handstamp
The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German occupying forces in November 1940.
Witold Pilecki
A T55 tank purchased for exhibition
The kind of tank used to suppress the Prague Spring in 1968
