Northcliffe publishing group’s BAFTA award-winning interactive educational website, Headline History, has scooped an “online Oscar” following a massive vote of confidence from its British fans.

www.headlinehistory.co.uk beat fierce competition from websites from around the world after lobbying hard to win the Broadband Category of the People’s Voice Award, organised as part of the 9th Annual Webby Awards.

Project manager Elaine Pritchard is proud of the win, which came as a result of a national campaign for online votes, which was as hard fought as the Parliamentary elections.

A banner campaign ran on Northcliffe’s this is websites, and visitors to Headline History were also urged to support the website, which was the only British site nominated in the Broadband category.

More than 200,000 votes were cast by Internet users across the world in this year’s People’s Voice Awards – a record response.

Headline History, which launched last summer with content covering just the Victorian era in the east Midlands, went national last month and now has content specific to every English region covering the eras of Roman, Tudor, Victorian and World War Two history.

Its popularity with teachers, pupils and members of the public has grown in recent weeks and Elaine says she was more amused than miffed when fellow Webby winners, the Guardian – named best online newspaper in the awards, dubbed Headline History “obscure” in its report.

She said: “I was just pleased that they noted our success alongside other British winners including websites run by BBC Radio One, Jamie Oliver and comedian Eddie Izzard.

“With a BAFTA under our belt and now our first international win plus the launch this month of a CD ROM which is being delivered free to schools across England, for use as part of their lesson plans, Headline History is set to shake off its ‘obscure ‘ name tag and become something of a household name itself.”

The Broadband category honours websites that make the most of high bandwidth connections, which is what Headline History achieves with its streaming video, featuring 120 historical characters that young visitors can “interview” and add their quotes into online stories.

The 9th Annual Webby Awards gala ceremony will be held at Gotham Hall in New York City on June 6.

Headline History was devised and created by NEP and commissioned and funded by the Government’s Culture Online initiative – part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.