Volume 15 Issue 9 September 1965

The Italian patriot’s visit to England was extraordinarily successful. But Queen Victoria deplored the scenes it provoked; and Karl Marx described them as “a miserable spectacle of imbecility”.

Eighteenth-century ambassadors to the Sublime Porte found little to admire in Turkey, writes Lavender Cassels, and suffered many humiliations before they reached the Sultan’s presence.

Unlike Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar had to deal with rivals as ambitious and influential as himself; and S. Usher finds that he has left a lucid account of his rise to greatness.

Martin Holmes describes how, when Henry VIII was aged twenty-six, the Easter sermons of 1517 provoked riots in London against the wealth and power of aliens at Court.

Not until three years after the fall of Jerusalem did Zealot resistance come to a bloody end. S.G.F. Brandon reviews the history of this fanatical sect, whose exemplary devotion and fortitude modern Israelis seek to emulate.

Eunice H. Turner asserts that much has been written of Elizabeth’s male favourites; less is known of the devoted women friends who served her assiduously throughout her long existence

David Francis Jones describes how, among primitive peoples encountered by the Romans, the fair-haired, blue-eyed Celts made a particularly deep impression.