H.E. Marshall, The Ghost Behind "Our Island Story": How a 1905 Book Still Haunts British Classrooms Today
- David Salariya
- Jun 30
- 22 min read
Updated: Jul 1
H. E. Marshall is remembered today, if at all, as the author of one of the most influential, and quietly mythologising, children’s history books. This blog explores her life, her legacy, and the uncomfortable cultural afterlives of her most famous work.
In 1905, H.E. Marshall wrote what would become one of the most influential - and quietly insidious, children’s history books of the 20th century. More than a century later, Our Island Story still lurks on school shelves, offering a vision of Britain that remains both seductive and troubling.
A Woman Writer in a Man’s Industry
To be a woman writing history books in 1905 was to defy quiet but powerful constraints. Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, unmarried, financially independent, and working in a male-dominated world of publishing, likely faced the limitations of what we now call "work for hire" arrangements. These were common in educational publishing, especially for women, who were often commissioned to write to a house format, with minimal rights, no royalties, and no public recognition. The very structure of the industry ensured that a woman’s contribution, however significant, was rarely protected or promoted. Marshall’s initials masked her gender. Her prose, shaped by Victorian morality and Edwardian certainties, was in service to a national narrative that demanded clarity, not complexity. Yet beneath this, there is the ghost of a woman who had to make her living by storytelling - careful, loyal, patriotic storytelling - written in the shadow of economic loss, a vanished family business, and a culture that rewarded silence in its female authors.
Great Reviews for a third edition of "Our Island Story"
The review assumes the author is a "Mr Marshall".
Weekly Times & Echo (London) - Sunday 19 March 1911
OUR ISLAND STORY. Every parent who cares for the education of his children is anxious to introduce them to the history of the nation in a way that will interest and at the same time stimulate to further study. When one finds a work that will do this in a fairly satisfactory fashion, one instinctively feels that one has discovered something more than merely a good book. In such a case the parent is opening for his children the doorway to a life experience and making the difficult path to knowledge easy to travel. Such, we believe, will be the opinion of any parent who gives to his children a copy of H. E. Marshall’s Our Island Story.” It tells the fascinating story of the rise and development of a mighty people, and yet, as the author points out, is “not a history lesson, but a story-book.”” The author knows enough of the child-mind to appreciate that there may be in an ordinary history lesson an element that repels the child, but that the way of approach may be so changed - so suggestive of the fairy story, if you please that the average child will read with eagerness and delight. The scientific -basis of history may be postponed at this immature age. - historical method - is more suited to the University than to the home or the kindergarten. The story method may be, and we believe usually is, the most efiective way of educating the child under twelve. Mr. Marshall has evidently become convinced of this truth. On these lines he has built us his book. It is a collection of delightfully told stories, beginning with the mythical story of Albion and Brutus, and including in its early pages the stories of the coming of Caesar and Caligula, and the heroism of Caractacus and Boadicea. Nearly all the early traditions have been included. The stories of the later years are told with a breeziness and simplicity that will make the book read with pleasure, we prophesy, not only by the children of those homes into which it may come, but also by the oldergrown. It is not an unprofitable book for parents. This third edition has thirty full-page illustrations in colour by A. S. Forrest, which make *Our Island Story” all the more acceptable as a gift-book. In this field of colour work the publishers, Messrs. T. C. and E. C. Jack, have made a name for themselves. They have done more than any other single firm to elevate the three-colour branch of illustrating to a worthy position. We heartily recommend this story-book to parents and teachers.
The Spectral Author
She helped tell a national story, yet her own story all but vanished.
Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall was born in 1867 in Bo’ness, Scotland. She published under her initials, H.E., partly to mask her gender. She never married, never gave interviews, and left no known diaries. Educated at Laurel Bank, a girls' boarding school in Melrose, she briefly served as superintendent of a women’s hall of residence at the University of Glasgow (1901–1904). After that, she earned her living entirely through writing, a quiet but determined independence.
The World That Shaped H.E. Marshall
Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, grew up in a household shaped by enterprise, education, and empire. Her father, John Marshall, was a successful corn merchant who, in 1854, acquired the long-running Bo’ness Pottery - one of Scotland’s most historic ceramics manufacturers. Under his leadership, the business was expanded and modernised, employing nearly 150 people by the 1860s. With the arrival of the railways and steamship trade, Marshall’s wares reached far beyond Scotland. His commemorative ceramics and transfer-printed dinner services were sold in Canada, India, and America, and were admired for their craftsmanship and wit. The family lived at Richmond House, a substantial comfortable house in Bo’ness, and moved in educated, middle-class circles.
John Marshall died in 1879 when Henrietta was only twelve, and her mother Catherine Jane Pratt passed away four years later. Henrietta was the tenth of eleven children, with six brothers and four sisters. Her older siblings helped continue the family business, most notably her brothers John and James Marshall, who kept the pottery running until its eventual liquidation in 1899. The business’s decline mirrored wider shifts in trade, industrial competition, and capital investment at the close of the 19th century.
Henrietta, meanwhile, was sent to Laurel Bank School in Melrose, a boarding school run by two unmarried sisters in the Presbyterian tradition. It provided a mix of academic and moral education suited to girls of professional or mercantile families. From there, she started out on a path of quiet independence - first as superintendent of Queen Margaret Hall, a women's residence at the University of Glasgow (1901–1904), and then as a writer. Living mostly in the south of England.
Henrietta never married but made her living through her books, most famously Our Island Story(1905), a children's history of Britain that became a cultural touchstone.
In adulthood, she seems to have maintained a close circle of like-minded, educated women friends. One, Rosalie Keen (née Muirhead), appears in both the 1911 and 1921 census Henrietta in Surrey. Rosalie was married to a barrister, Frank Noel Keen, and the couple seemed to have been hosts to Henrietta as a long-term guest - suggesting a an enduring friendship. Both women moved in overlapping social worlds shaped by education, independence, and the upper-middle class values of service.
Henrietta’s life - spanning from industrial Scotland to literary England - offers a fascinating example of how a Victorian girl from a small pottery town could grow into a woman who helped shape how British children understood their past. Her family's business may have faded, but her influence endured, quietly sketched into generations of schoolrooms and bookshelves.
Her book prefaces hint of a life of travel, mentioning journeys to Melbourne, California, and China. Yet The Times obituary claimed she spent most of her years in Oxford and London, where she died in New End Hospital, Hampstead in1941, her address was listed as 21 Priory Terrace, Hampstead and her effects at £539, 2s 4d. For someone who narrated a nation’s past with such certainty, her own life remains oddly insubstantial - half-glimpsed through print, half-lost to history.
Our Island Story: A History of Britain for Boys and Girls,
And yet Our Island Story: A History of Britain for Boys and Girls, published in 1905, became a defining children’s history book of the 20th century. It shaped how generations of British children imagined their past: not as a tangled web of competing stories, but as a single, heroic, and relentlessly white tale of triumph.
This, despite the fact that Marshall herself insisted she was “not trying to teach you, but only to tell a story.” In her preface, she gently urged young readers to shelve the book beside Robinson Crusoe and “A Noah’s Ark Geography”, not alongside their schoolbooks. Her aim was enchantment, not instruction: a fireside fable of Britain’s past, complete with noble kings, plucky children, and the occasional “fairy tale.”
But what begins as storytime has a habit of sticking. Told often enough, and early enough, stories can harden into cultural memory. Our Island Story may have arrived in a storybook wrapper, but its reassuring narrative became, for many, the default history of Britain. The messier truths, the empire, the violence, the voices left out, were smoothed away, marked as too complex for “little people” and, in time, quietly forgotten by the grown-ups too.
A History Book With No Mirror
At first glance, Our Island Story is a romantic gallop through noble monarchs, brave battles, and stirring moral lessons. But look again, and the omissions are glaring. The book reflects not only the anxieties of Edwardian Britain, but of modern Britain too.
Consider the Telegraph comment section on 29 May 2025. A single footnote in a teaching guide: "Vikings weren’t all white"- was enough to provoke outrage. One commenter sneered, "Why turn it into a fantasy where it always has to include black people?" Another, bizarrely, claimed: *"We know for a fact that Adolf 'itler was black and they are all proud of that." A third proudly asserted that Britain’s whiteness was something to celebrate.
None of them cited archaeology, DNA, or the vast reach of Viking trade. This wasn’t a debate about history. It was a defence of ideological territory.
What Our Island Story Leaves Out
Our Island Story, first published in the glow of pre-WWI imperial confidence, presents:
No people of colour. Not a single Black, Asian, or non-European figure appears as a real, active part of British history.
No empire subjects. India, Africa, the Caribbean—regions central to Britain’s global power, are barely mentioned, except as “possessions.”
No working-class voices. History is told from the point of view of monarchs and generals. Ordinary Britons are scenery, not participants.
No critique of conquest. The violence of empire, the slave trade, and colonial rebellion are invisible, or dressed up as civilising adventures.
This isn’t history. It’s myth-making. A tidy tale for an empire anxious to preserve its own sense of superiority.
These silences aren’t accidental. They’ve been quietly preserved, edition after edition, for over a century. Here's how the book's updates - and omissions - played out over time:
But Why Was It Reissued in 2005?
In 2005, Our Island Story was revived and distributed to thousands of UK primary schools. It wasn’t a literary event, it was a political one.
Civitas, a right-leaning think tank, saw it as a remedy to what they viewed as a fragmented, ideologically muddled curriculum. With support from The Telegraph and donations totalling over £35,000, they printed thousands of free hardbacks for schools. David Cameron had called it his favourite childhood book. Lady Antonia Fraser joined in the praise.
But why bring back a book from 1905 in the era of iPods and multicultural classrooms?
Because Britain was having a crisis of identity.
The early 2000s were marked by:
The Iraq War and loss of faith in political leadership.
Ongoing debates about immigration, multiculturalism, and national values.
The rise of nostalgia politics - “Make Britain Great Again” before Trump ever said it.
Worries (especially from the right) that children no longer “knew” their history.
Into this fraught atmosphere, Our Island Story offered simplicity and comfort, a Persil-white vision of Britain, where the past had been laundered so thoroughly that not even the bloodstains of empire dared leave a mark. History, it seemed, had come out whiter than white.
Our Island Story - What Got Left Out: A Timeline of Editions and Their Silences
1905 - First Edition (T. C. & E. C. Jack, London)
Ends with the death of Queen Victoria (1901).
No mention of World War I, despite rising tensions across Europe.
Empire is presented as unproblematic: no reference to colonised peoples, slavery, or resistance.
Britain is cast as a heroic, unified, white, Christian force for good.
1920 - Post-WWI Updated Edition
Adds chapters on the First World War (1914–1918) and the League of Nations.
Frames WWI as a necessary sacrifice, ending with hope for peace through international cooperation.
Still no mention of India, the Caribbean, Africa, or non-white British citizens.
Colonial troops who fought in WWI are not acknowledged.
1953 Queen Elizabeth II Coronation-Year Edition
Reprints the WWI additions, but does not include WWII or the rise of Nazism.
The failure of the League of Nations is left unmentioned.
Still preserves the tidy, monarch-and-military-focused view of history.
2005 - Centenary Edition (Galore Park / Civitas)
Reverts to the 1905 original text—no WWI or later updates included.
Marketed as “heritage” reading for schoolchildren; reinforces the imperial nostalgia of the original.
"Our Island Story is...cutting edge. With its brave mix of truth and myth, it is impeccably postmodern."- The Economist, 20 August 2005
2010s–Present - “Complete” Reprints (e.g. Living Book Press, New West Press)
Some modern editions include the 1920 WWI chapters, ending with the League of Nations.
None extend beyond 1919. No reference to WWII, Nazis, Holocaust, decolonisation, or civil rights.
Still no women’s suffrage, no trade unions, no Windrush, no post-war immigration.
The Historical Black Hole
Even in its most expansive form, Our Island Story ends before:
The rise of fascism and the Second World War.
The partition of India, end of empire, or any struggles for independence.
The arrival of Commonwealth migrants, civil rights movements, or post-war social change.
The NHS, welfare state, or modern multicultural Britain.
The Danger of Nostalgia in the Classroom
When children are given books like Our Island Story uncritically, several things happen:
They’re given a lie of omission. If children don’t learn that Britain was built with slave labour, with colonial extraction, and by people of many races and backgrounds, they grow up with a distorted map of the world.
They internalise who matters. If every hero in the story looks the same, speaks the same, and comes from the same class, children outside that mould learn they are footnotes, not protagonists.
They become easy prey for culture warriors. When honest, inclusive history is taught, some will shout “woke” or “revisionist.” But revision is how history works. Nostalgia isn’t history - it’s politics in costume.
Legacy or Liability?
Our Island Story still has a powerful pull. Its prose is lively. Its characters are vivid. But it is a book built on exclusion - racial, cultural, and social.
Henrietta Marshall herself may not have been a crusader - she was a woman of her time, doing what she believed was right. But her book has been used as a Trojan horse to smuggle imperial sentiment into modern classrooms and although this happened twenty years ago, school libraries when they do exist tend to hang on to books.
If we’re serious about history, and about children, we must do better.
If H.E. Marshall is a ghost, she’s not a harmless one. She reminds us that through her books the past we choose to tell says more about our present than our origins. And when those stories go unchallenged, they haunt us in all the wrong ways.
The Publishers of H.E. Marshall: A Clue to Her Disappearance?
Our Island Story was first published in 1905 by T. C. & E. C. Jack, an Edinburgh-based publishing house founded by Thomas and Edward Jack. They specialised in educational and reference books, and had a reputation for middlebrow, family-oriented works that were informative but accessible - precisely the tone Marshall struck in her storytelling.
T.C. & E.C. Jack was not a powerhouse like Longmans or Macmillan, and its titles were more practical than prestigious. This meant that while their books sold well to schools and families, their authors rarely entered the literary elite. Marshall’s name, already partly concealed by her initials, was not a brand in itself - it was the title that sold.
In the 1910s and 1920s, T.C. & E.C. Jack was eventually absorbed into Thomas Nelson and Sons, another Scottish publisher. Nelson had a long history of printing religious and educational material and eventually became part of Collins, which would in turn be swallowed by HarperCollins. Through these corporate mergers, Marshall's original publisher was subsumed into larger houses, and her name likely got lost in the shuffle.
Additionally:
By the mid-20th century, when Our Island Story fell out of educational favour due to its dated imperial tone, no one was actively promoting Marshall's legacy.
She didn’t own the copyright in the way modern authors might hope to. In fact, much of her work likely passed into corporate catalogues and, eventually, public domain.
Later revivals (such as Golore Park/Civitas's 2005 reprint focused on the message, not the messenger. She was invoked, but not rediscovered.
In short, her publishers were competent but unglamorous, and their histories of merger and absorption mirrored her own vanishing into the machinery of Empire-era educational publishing. She was useful, then surplus - not canonised, not collected, and not defended.
Erased by Design? Why So Little Is Known About H.E. Marshall?
Hampstead News - Thursday 25 September 1941
Death of H. E. Marshall Author oF OUR ISLAND STORY Miss Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, author of "Our Island Story" and many other successful books for children, died suddenly on Friday at the age of 74. Her home was at Priory Terrace, West Hampstead. From a child Miss Marshall delighted in writing and telling stories, and many of her young friends, and later on their children, listened entranced to her original and charming tales, many of which were later published. Her history books gave history a new meaning to young people and many children have found "Our Island Story" their first real insight into the history of this country.
That we know so little about Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall is itself a telling reflection of her time, and of the publishing structures that absorbed her. First, she was a woman writing non-fiction in an era when female authors were typically encouraged towards domestic novels or religious works. To be an unmarried woman producing history books for children was, even then, out of step with the norm.
Second, she was likely working, at least in part, (just a suspicion) on a 'for hire' basis. Many publishers at that time and continue to do the same now commissioned educational books with house editors guiding the tone, format, and messaging. Authors, particularly women, were often treated as interchangeable content providers, not as creative originators with careers to cultivate. If Our Island Story was produced under these conditions, it’s possible Marshall was never seen by her publisher as someone worth building a name around. Her name didn’t sell the book - the idea of the book did.
Third, the book’s framing as a "story" rather than a history may have further trivialised its author’s status. Though Marshall drew on substantial historical texts, the tone was conversational, moralistic, and mythologising - placing it in a strange no-man’s-land between literature and curriculum. This may have ensured commercial success, but it excluded her from the serious historical canon and the literary one too.
Add to this that she spent time abroad in Australia and China travelling, and that her working life included a stint as superintendent of a women’s hall of residence at Glasgow University (1901–1904) - a respectable but essentially caretaking post rather than a scholarly one, and her erasure starts to look structural.
Her independence, her travel, her gender, her genre, and the likely terms of her labour all conspired to keep her out of the limelight, even as her words reached hundreds of thousands of young minds. It is a quiet irony that the author of Britain’s most famous children’s history book has herself become a footnote, when she helped write the national myth.
Ten Ways Our Island Story Reflects the Past - But Not Our Future
Or: Why It Belongs in a Museum, Not a Modern Classroom
1. Britain as a Heroic Lone Wolf Marshall paints Britain as an isolated hero, defending liberty against wave after wave of foreign invaders. In reality, Britain's story is one of constant entanglement, cultural, economic, and political, with Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
2. History Ends with Queen Victoria The book stops just as the 20th century begins. There’s no mention of World War I (some editions make revisions to include WWI), the suffragettes, the fall of empire, or the rise of modern Britain, let alone anything beyond 1905.
3. Empire as a Glorious AdventureBritish imperialism is treated as noble and civilising. There’s no examination of colonial violence, exploitation, resistance, or the perspectives of colonised peoples.
4. No People of Colour At All, Despite the long presence of people of African, Indian, and Asian descent in Britain, Our Island Story presents a monocultural narrative that erases them entirely.
5. The Slave Trade Is MissingThere’s no discussion of Britain’s deep involvement in the transatlantic slave trade - or the profits it generated, or the lives it destroyed.
6. Kings and Queens Get All the Credit Ordinary people, farmers, factory workers, women, activists, barely exist. The book reinforces the “great man” theory of history, ignoring the collective action that shaped social progress.
7. It’s Anti-Catholic and Narrowly Protestant Religious difference is portrayed in stark, moralistic terms. The Reformation is treated as a triumphant purging of superstition, and Catholic figures are often demonised or reduced to caricature.
8. Scotland, Ireland, and Wales Are Afterthoughts Britain is treated as a single, cohesive entity, when in fact it was forged through conquest, suppression, and uneasy union. Ireland’s struggles, in particular, are grotesquely simplified.
9. Women Are Mostly Missing or Royal Apart from queens (usually judged on their piety or “weakness”), women are barely mentioned. No suffragettes. No women workers. No dissenting voices.
10. It’s a Morality Tale, Not a History Book Marshall’s tone is didactic: good kings are wise, bad kings are greedy. Events unfold with the moral simplicity of a Sunday school lesson, not the messy complexity of actual history.
Alternatives for Teaching British History in 2025
A Starter List for Curious Classrooms and Open Minds
Here are thoughtful, inclusive, and engaging alternatives that reflect the real diversity and complexity of Britain’s past, and are age-appropriate for primary and lower secondary readers.
Illustrated Non-Fiction
1. Black and British: A Short, Essential History (David Olusoga, illustrated by Jake Alexander and Melleny Taylor)Engagingly written and beautifully illustrated, this tells the stories left out of traditional narratives. A classroom essential.
2. You Wouldn’t Want to Be... series (of course my own...David Salariya et al.) Humorous, irreverent, and immersive, these books make history stick by putting children in the shoes of those who lived it (warts, dysentery and all).
3. Great Women Who Changed the World (Kate Pankhurst)A wonderful introduction to women’s overlooked contributions across history, with strong visual storytelling.
4. Britain’s Black Past (ed. Gretchen Gerzina/ Liverpool University Press) While pitched for adults, there’s scope for educators to adapt case studies from this accessible and visually engaging book.
5. The Windrush Legacy (WJEC/Guardian Education)Brilliant for KS2 and KS3. Tells real stories, includes artwork and music, and connects British history with global migration.
6. Migration: The Making of Britain (The Runnymede Trust) Free teaching packs that integrate empire, migration, and race into a coherent timeline.
7. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Mildred D. Taylor)While American in setting, it sparks crucial conversations about race, resistance, and injustice.
8. The Boy at the Back of the Class (Onjali Q. Raúf) Modern British history through the eyes of a Syrian refugee, exploring empathy and belonging.
For Educators and Parents
Use multiple sources: No single book can do it all. Layer fiction, biography, visual texts, and oral history.
Invite debate: Ask "Whose voice is missing?" or "What might someone else have said?" Encourage children to imagine the silenced.
Teach history as a story, but make it many stories. British history isn’t a single, proud tale, it’s a jumbled, contested, global epic.
In a way my own series You Wouldn't Want To be ...created in 1999 was a reaction to children's books like Our Island Story - I wanted To unleash the gruesome, gory, gut-churning truth of the past on an unsuspecting army of schoolchildren - and have them gobbling it up like plague rats in a pie shop...and it worked...but now children need new books to reflect the age they live in...not 1905 not 1999...but 2025.
Our Island Story: The Curious Case of the 2005 Revival
In 2005, a 100-year-old children’s history book, Our Island Story by H.E. Marshall, was unexpectedly resurrected and sent out to thousands of UK schools. Beloved by Edwardians, long out of print, and steeped in Empire, the book’s return was orchestrated not by a mainstream publisher, but by a right-leaning think tank and a daily newspaper.
It wasn’t just a publishing event. It was a statement of cultural intent.
Who was behind it?
The revival was the brainchild of Civitas, a London-based think tank founded by Dr. David Green. Known for championing traditional education, Civitas saw Our Island Story as an antidote to what it viewed as a fragmented and ideologically muddled curriculum. Deputy Director Robert Whelan called the book “a serious lesson in the institutions of a free society”, trial by jury, freedom of worship, and the rule of law wrapped in heroic storytelling.
Civitas pitched the book as “a return to a way of teaching history that has been out of fashion”, one that embraced chronology, character, and patriotic continuity.
Who paid for it?
The project was co-funded by readers of The Daily Telegraph, who responded to a May 2005 appeal by donating over £25,000. Civitas added another £10,000 from its supporters. The funds were used to print 5,000 free hardback copies for primary schools across the UK. Cheques arrived in sacks. John Clare, Telegraph Education Editor, called the book “a marvellous antidote” to modern teaching.
This was not a state initiative. It was a grassroots effort by nostalgic adults, many of whom had grown up with Marshall’s book and wanted their grandchildren to have the same “island story.”
How big was the campaign?
The first print run of 20,000 copies sold out in weeks. A second run followed, along with bulk orders to wholesalers. By year’s end, over 40,000 copies had been sold, and Civitas had begun mailing out the first wave of free books to schools, over 1,500 in the initial batch. Their goal was to reach every primary school in Britain.
The book was reissued not by a major literary publisher, but by Galore Park, a publisher of educational material for independent schools. Civitas partnered with Galore Park to produce a hardback edition, complete with the original illustrations by A.S. Forrest.
Who supported it?
The campaign received glowing endorsements from across the cultural and political spectrum:
Prince Charles didn't support the book, he had earlier called for history to be taught as “a chronological narrative that makes sense of people and events.” Civitas claimed the book brought that vision “a step closer.”
David Cameron, then newly elected Tory leader, declared it his favourite childhood book, saying it “captured [his] imagination” and inspired his love of British history.
Lady Antonia Fraser and Andrew Roberts credited the book with their early historical passions. Roberts called it “a marvellous antidote to the fractured, incoherent history most primary school children are taught today.”
Dr. David Starkey read it aloud to schoolchildren and likened its revival to Jamie Oliver’s school dinner revolution, “We’ve lost the story, the human beings, the characters. All that’s gone.”
Labour MP Frank Field backed it, awarding Civitas essay competition prizes at the Houses of Parliament.
Kevin Crossley-Holland, "I’m aware now that Marshall’s thrilling stories about them have had a lasting impact on my thinking."
And who criticised it?
Not everyone applauded the book’s triumphant return.
Historian Amanda Vickery, writing in The Guardian, warned that Marshall’s work, written “at the high tide of Rule Britannia”, presented a romanticised, Anglo-centric history. She noted that Scotland, Wales, and Ireland were barely more than afterthoughts, and that the book erased colonial subjects, empire resistance, and people of colour.
Vickery and others viewed the campaign as an attempt to reassert imperial nostalgia at a time when schools were being encouraged to take a more inclusive, global approach to history. The Government was urging a pluralistic curriculum; Our Island Story offered a tale of noble kings, plucky queens, and the glorious inevitability of Britain’s destiny.
Even Marshall herself admitted, “This is not a history lesson, but a storybook,” adding that it belonged “beside Robinson Crusoe.” And yet, Civitas sent it into classrooms with a sense of civic urgency.
One last thing
The 2005 revival of Our Island Story was not just a publishing curiosity, it was part of a larger cultural debate about who gets to tell Britain’s story.
It revealed the enduring power of children’s books to shape national memory, and the uncomfortable truth that history, when retold without context, becomes myth.
An Island Story: A History of England for Boys and Girls.By Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, 1876-1941.Illustratedby A. S. (Archibald Stevenson) Forrest, 1869-1963.New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1920.
Books by H.E. Marshall
Our Island Story (1905)
Scotland’s Story (1906)
Our Empire Story (1908), including Canada, India, Australasia, and South Africa
A History of France (1912)
A History of Germany (1913)
This Country of Ours (1917, USA) / The Story of the United States (1919, UK)
Kings and Things (1937)
English Literature for Boys and Girls (1909)
A New British History Should Include:
1. Empire and Its Legacy
Not just the rise of empire, but its real consequences: colonisation, resource extraction, resistance movements, and the long shadows of racism and inequality. The British Empire reshaped the world - and left deep wounds that are still raw.
From India to the Caribbean, from Africa to Hong Kong - these stories are not add-ons; they are central.
2. Migration, Movement and Belonging
Britain was never an island unto itself. The Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Huguenots, Irish, Windrush generation, South Asians, Eastern Europeans, and countless others have made their home here.
Modern British history must show that migration is not a disruption of history - it’s a driving force of it.
3. The Working Class and Labour Movements
From the Industrial Revolution to the Tolpuddle Martyrs, from the coal mines to the NHS - history needs to include those who built the country with their hands and organised for their rights.
Too often, history is told from the top down. Let’s turn that telescope around.
4. Women’s Voices and Struggles
Not only queens and noblewomen, but suffragettes, midwives, protestors, thinkers, and anonymous women who held households, factories, and farms together.
History isn’t only what happened in Parliament. It’s also what happened at the kitchen table.
5. Scotland, Wales, and Ireland - in Their Own Right
A “British” history that only centres England is misleading. The complexities of the Union, the legacy of the Troubles, and the independence movements all deserve open, equal attention.
This should be a history of nations, not just of one.
6. Black British History
From Roman African soldiers on Hadrian’s Wall to Black Georgians, the Bristol Bus Boycott, and the Grenfell Tower fire, Black British history is British history.
This must be visible, embedded, and not reduced to a themed month.
7. Resistance and Protest
The history of dissent - from the Chartists and Luddites to Greenham Common and Extinction Rebellion - shows how democracy is shaped not just by those in office, but by those who stood outside the gates...shouting!
Power is part of history. So is pushing back against it.
8. Faiths, Freedoms and Conflict
The Reformation, the Civil War, the rise of secularism, religious tolerance—and intolerance. Britain’s religious history is one of upheaval, adaptation, and diversity.
To understand today’s freedoms, children need to know they were fought for.
9. Creativity, Innovation, and Cultural Exchange
From Shakespeare and the Beatles to Stormzy, Ada Lovelace to Zadie Smith, Britain’s contribution to ideas, literature, science, art and music has always been enriched by global influences.
Our most iconic creations often came from unlikely, marginal, or misunderstood places.
10. Truth-Telling and Historical Thinking
Rather than presenting history as a settled story, we must teach how it’s constructed - who tells it, who gets left out, and how perspectives shift. Equip children not just with facts, but with the tools to question them.
In a world of misinformation, critical history is a civic survival skill.
Today, the ghost of H.E. Marshall walks not just through dusty school libraries, but across the keyboard of every reader who sneers at inclusive history with sarcasm,and panic. It is not the past they fear losing - it is a version of it that placed them permanently at the centre.
Let Our Island Story remain on the shelf - as a relic of its time, not a road map for ours.
Children deserve stories that reflect the country they live in, not the empire some still wish it was.
And if we must tell an island story in 2025, let it be one where everyone gets to land.
While H. E. Marshall’s stirring prose rightly earns her praise as the voice behind Our Island Story, it’s worth pausing to consider the book’s illustrator, A. S. Forrest. Biographical information about Forrest is surprisingly as elusive as H.E. Marshall, but his impact is undeniable. He painted powerful, enduring images that brought history to life for generations, blending myth, patriotism, and storytelling into compelling imagery.
I’m currently looking into Forrest’s background and artistic legacy - his work deserves a closer look, not least because it helped to define the visual imagination of British history for much of the 20th century.
David Salariya is the creator of over 60 bestselling children’s book series, including You Wouldn’t Want To Be…, A Very Peculiar History, and Spectacular Visual Guides. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide.
An illustrator, designer, and publisher, he founded The Salariya Book Company in 1989. The company was acquired by Bonnier UK in 2022, and the series David created and designed are now republished under the Bonnier Hatch imprint.
His work has been published globally by Scholastic, National Geographic, and Franklin Watts. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Society of Authors. He also writes under the pen names David Stewart and Max Marlborough.
Explore more at davidsalariya.com
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