On Tuesday 4 October 1904, at 3pm (or so the newspapers say), Professor Albert Pollard, Professor of Constitutional History at University College London, gave his inaugural lecture, entitled “The University of London and the Teaching of History”.

His argument was, apparently (I haven’t been able to find the text of his address), that there was a need for a postgraduate school of historical research. And maybe, since this boils down to “professor argues for more resources in their discipline”, it isn’t surprising that it wasn’t treated as newsworthy.

But the University of London is not a newspaper; its machinations grind slow but exceeding small. And in 1920 a sum of £24,000 had been raised to support such a venture. The vast bulk of this, £20,000, came anonymously from Sir John Power, a property developer and philanthropist, and later a Conservative MP. It is harder to think of writing this sentence nowadays.

Impetus was given by Albert Pollard and by Eliza Jeffries Davis, who in 1921 was appointed reader in London History.

The University of London is a federal university, and like the French republic has gone through various iterations. At that time the university senate was a very powerful body, and it created a new class of institution: the Senate Institute. It also established the Institute of Historical Research (the IHR) as the first such institute.

The institute was housed at first in a temporary hut on Malet Street, which became known to historians as the Tudor Cottage – I think that this must be the site which is now Birkbeck College. The central site was deliberate to allow easy access to the British Museum, and Library and the Public Records Office.

The Institute clearly became a recognised part of London life. This 1936 cartoon from the London Evening News gives it a gentle ribbing. The London Laughs series by Joseph Lee ran between 1934 and 1966 and is apparently the longest running daily cartoon series in history.

In the rear of the Lee cartoon can be seen the growing form of Senate House, into which the IHR was to move. But not until 1947. During the second world war Senate House was used by the Ministry of Information, becoming the model for the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984.

And during that same war the Tudor Cottage was destroyed by a bomb. The IHR had been temporarily closed, so there was no loss of life, but it seems that six books and the Institute’s collection of London maps was destroyed. Remember that Eliza Davis was Reader in London History: the loss of the maps must have hurt.

Since then the Institute has remained in Senate House, which is why today’s postcard is appropriate. When the university’s statutes were changed in 1994, changing the balance of power between the university centrally and its constituent colleges, the Senate Institutes, including the IHR, were placed under the umbrella of the newly-formed School of Advanced Study.

You can probably tell from these blogs that I’m a big fan of history and historians. I use these blogs to tell stories about universities and colleges. Real historians, like the ones at the IHR, tell us about the past in order that we can find better ways to understand the world we live in now. 18 November 2026 is the annual history day, and the IHR is running a free day of events. You can sign up here and see what’s on offer here. If I were in London, you bet I’d be there!

Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard. It hasn’t been sent, but it is based on the architect’s drawings rather than the completed building itself, so my guess is that it dates from the late 1930s or the immediate post-war 1940s.