Voyage - Trinity Term 2026

We’re very pleased to announce that The Herodotian has partnered with ABBA!

No, not really. Perhaps next term. On a more serious note, we’re very pleased to unveil our theme for next term – Voyage.

There’s something romantic about the very word. Just saying it conjures up images of history’s great travellers, and the ornate prose they and others have dedicated to far-flung places. Think of Marco Polo’s account of the portable cane palacein Xanadu, a description so gripping Samuel Taylor Coleridge refashioned it five hundred years later to tell of the “stately pleasure dome” decreed by Kubla Khan.

Yet if your tastes are a little more prosaic, you need not be so aesthetic. You could spend eons listing journeys which have fundamentally affected the course of history: Christ’s journey around the province of Judaea during his ministry, Muhammad’s ascent to heaven during the night journey, Franz Ferdinand’s trip across Sarajevo in late June 1914. The consequences of history’s most famous journeys vary from political to theological to economic to much more besides – the possibilities are endless.

And of course voyage need not be taken so literally. You could take a voyage through the life of a historical figure; for example, chronicling Joseph Chamberlain’s transformation from “fiery red” to “true blue”. You could survey the journey Marxist historiography has been on since the end of the Second World War, or plot the downwards trajectory of the Ottoman Empire from the gates of Vienna in 1863 to the terminal humiliation of Sèvres in 1920. It’s your choice – the only limitations we impose are that your article must be historical and plausibly connected to the theme Voyage.

And if you’re really struggling for ideas, you could always write an article on the development of Swedish pop music…