For more than a decade, writes Robert Rhodes James, until personal disaster overwhelmed him in 1890, Parnell and the Irish Nationalists held the balance in the House of Commons, and by a policy of considered obstruction swayed the course of British politics.
As Professor of Arabic at Oxford, writes P.M. Holt, Pococke pursued his scholarly life amid civil war and republican experiment.
During the Seven Years' War with France and Spain, writes A.P. Thornton, a British expedition from India captured and held the Philippine capital.
Evelyn Hardy visits an English architectural monument of elaborate richness.
Dorothy Margaret Stuart gives the political background of the career of Joan of Arc, when France was enfeebled by foreign invasion and civil strife, and the Duchy of Burgundy had almost achieved the status of an independent European power.
Nancy Mitford takes a perceptive and ironic look at the reaction of 18th-century French 'society' to the Enlightenment's great philosophe.
