A-level History resources designed for Edexcel teachers — built from a decade of expert modern history content, written by a former Pearson/Edexcel examiner, and verified for accuracy before anything goes live.
What makes these resources different
Written by a former Edexcel examiner
Nick Shepley is a former Pearson/Edexcel History examiner and author of A-level History textbooks published under the Pearson/Hodder imprint. These resources are written with direct knowledge of what Edexcel mark schemes reward and where student scripts most commonly lose marks.
Examiner-verified accuracy
Every historian named is real. Every argument is faithfully represented. Every citation is checked. Nothing is published without Nick Shepley’s personal sign-off. Generic AI tools hallucinate historians and misattribute arguments. These packs don’t.
A real library, not a generator
Over a thousand episodes of expert modern history content — covering exactly the periods Edexcel examines. These resources draw on a decade of research and teaching, not an algorithm.
Historiography Reference Library
Explaining History’s 20th Century Interpretations section provides free, detailed reference pages on every major historiographical debate relevant to Edexcel specifications. Each page covers the central question, main schools of thought, how the debate developed, and where it stands now — with named historians, key texts, and links to relevant interpretation packs.
- The Russian Revolution
- The Stalinist Terror
- Nazi Germany
- The Holocaust
- The Fall of Weimar
- The Causes of the First World War
- The Causes of the Second World War
- The Origins of the Cold War
- Decolonisation
- British Imperial Decline
- Fascism
Full Edexcel coverage
Option pages are live for every Edexcel 9HI0 A-level History option. Each page includes a teaching overview, key themes, exam guidance, and historiography. Full interpretation packs will be added option by option, starting with the topics the Explaining History library covers most deeply.
Paper 1 — Period Studies
| Option | Title | Resources |
|---|---|---|
| 1A | The Crusades, c1095–1204 | Option guide ✓ |
| 1B | England, 1509–1603: Authority, Nation and Religion | Option guide ✓ |
| 1C | Britain, 1625–1701: Conflict, Revolution and Settlement | Option guide ✓ |
| 1D | Britain, c1785–c1870: Democracy, Protest and Reform | Option guide ✓ |
| 1E | Russia, 1917–91: from Lenin to Yeltsin | Option guide ✓ |
| 1F | In Search of the American Dream: the USA, c1917–96 | Option guide ✓ |
| 1G | Germany and West Germany, 1918–89 | Option guide ✓ |
| 1H | Britain Transformed, 1918–97 | Option guide ✓ |
Paper 1 — Depth Studies
| Option | Title | Resources |
|---|---|---|
| 2A.1 | Anglo-Saxon England and the Anglo-Norman Kingdom, c1053–1106 | Option guide ✓ |
| 2A.2 | England and the Angevin Empire in the Reign of Henry II, 1154–89 | Option guide ✓ |
| 2B.1 | Luther and the German Reformation, c1515–55 | Option guide ✓ |
| 2C.1 | France in Revolution, 1774–99 | Option guide ✓ |
| 2C.2 | Russia in Revolution, 1894–1924 | Option guide ✓ |
| 2D.1 | The Unification of Italy, c1830–70 | Option guide ✓ |
| 2D.2 | The Unification of Germany, c1840–71 | Option guide ✓ |
| 2E.1 | Mao’s China, 1949–76 | Option guide ✓ |
| 2E.2 | The German Democratic Republic, 1949–90 | Option guide ✓ |
| 2F.1 | India, c1914–48: the Road to Independence | Option guide ✓ |
| 2F.2 | South Africa, 1948–94: from Apartheid State to ‘Rainbow Nation’ | Option guide ✓ |
| 2H.1 | The USA, c1920–55: Boom, Bust and Recovery | Option guide ✓ |
Paper 3 — Thematic Studies
| Option | Title | Resources |
|---|---|---|
| 30 | Lancastrians, Yorkists and Henry VII, 1399–1509 | Option guide ✓ |
| 31 | Rebellion and Disorder under the Tudors, 1485–1603 | Option guide ✓ |
| 34.1 | Industrialisation and Social Change in Britain, 1759–1928: Forging a New Society | Option guide ✓ |
| 34.2 | Poverty, Public Health and the State in Britain, c1780–1939 | Option guide ✓ |
| 35.1 | Britain: Losing and Gaining an Empire, 1763–1914 | Option guide ✓ |
| 35.2 | The British Experience of Warfare, c1790–1918 | Option guide ✓ |
| 36.1 | Protest, Agitation and Parliamentary Reform in Britain, c1780–1928 | Option guide ✓ |
| 37.1 | The Changing Nature of Warfare, 1859–1991: Perception and Reality | Option guide ✓ |
| 37.2 | Germany, 1871–1990: United, Divided and Reunited | Option guide ✓ |
| 38.1 | The Making of Modern Russia, 1855–1991 | Option guide ✓ |
| 39.1 | Civil Rights and Race Relations in the USA, 1850–2009 | Option guide ✓ |
About these resources
These resources are written by Nick Shepley — former A-level History teacher, author of A-level History textbooks for Pearson/Hodder, and former Pearson/Edexcel examiner. Every interpretation pack is personally reviewed and signed off before publication. The guarantee is simple: you will not find a hallucinated historian or a misrepresented argument in these pages.
The material is built on the conviction that accurately assembled, topic-mapped historiography is the most useful thing a teacher can have — and the thing generic AI tools do worst. These packs exist because that gap is real and worth filling properly.
Free and subscriber access
Free
- First debate in every interpretation pack — including the full comparison task and provenance prompts
- The historiographical approaches summary table
- All option guide pages
- All Historiography Reference Library pages
Subscribers
- Full interpretation pack — all debates, all historians, all tasks
- Knowledge organisers (coming)
- Graded exemplar answers (coming)
- Practice questions and source packs (coming)
