William Beckford was the model of an 18th-century progressive and aesthete. But the wealth that allowed him to live such a lifestyle came from the slaves he exploited in his Caribbean holdings. Robert J. Gemmett looks at how an apparently civilised man sought to justify his hypocrisy.
Rachel Hammersley discusses how events in the 1640s and 1680s in England established a tradition that inspired French thinkers on the path to revolution a century later.
The 264 inhabitants of the island of Tristan da Cunha were evacuated to Cape Town on October 10th, 1961.
Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility was first published in London by Thomas Egerton on October 30th, 1811.
One of the architects of the British Empire resigned on 5 October 1761.
