History With the Boring Bits Put Back
Terry Jones, former Python, describes how a perverse fascination with the boring bits of Chaucer converted him from being a clown into a historian of the 14th century.
Feature
Felice Orsini: Striking a Blow for Freedom?
The consequences of Felice Orsini’s assassination attempt on Napoleon III were momentous and paradoxical.
Wallis Simpson and the Divorce Law
Did the British government suppress evidence that might have prevented Wallis Simpson’s divorce? Edward VIII’s marriage prompted changes to the law, but did it also break it?
The Meaning of Magna Carta since 1215
Ralph V. Turner considers how and why Magna Carta became a beacon of liberty in Britain and, increasingly, in the United States.
Britons in the Great Fire of Moscow
Some British and Irish-born Muscovites waited out Napoleon’s invasion of 1812, surviving both the French army and the five-day inferno.
Cardinal Richelieu: Hero or Villain?
The image of Cardinal Richelieu, carefully crafted during his lifetime, soon became that of a demonic schemer. How?
Sewing Machines: Liberation or Drudgery for Women?
With its effects felt on both the household and workplace over the 19th century, the invention of the sewing machine changed women’s lives. But not always for the better.
The Great Smog
Devra Davis looks at the London Smog disaster of 1952-53.
Corn, Catholics and the Constitution: The Tory Crisis of 1827-30
Graham Goodlad considers the reasons for the disintegration of the early nineteenth-century Tory Party, which had dominated British politics for more than four decades.
Sir John Simon
David Dutton asks whether Simon was the 'Worst Foreign Secretary since Ethelred the Unready'.