Britain

Uniquely of engineers, the reputation of Brunel lives on, commemorated by a university, dockyards, steamships, and countless other works of his discipline. But what, asks Walter Minchinton, were his achievements?

Before the Act of Union in 1800, writes John Stocks Powell, Grattan dominated Irish politics over twenty years in an age of enlightenment that failed.

Not until the second decade of the twentieth century, writes Alun C. Davies, was a standardised method of time-keeping established throughout Britain.

C.V. Wedgwood analyses the life, death, and influence of Thomas Wentworth, first earl of Strafford.

B.J. Haimes describes how a British airship, the R34, raised the possibility of transatlantic travel by dirigible.

D.L.B. Hartley describes the background to a postwar transatlantic aviation competition, famously won by Alcock and Brown’s Vickers Vimy aeroplane.

Chinese Emperors banned the importation of opium, writes M. Foster Farley, but it was smuggled into the country by East Indian traders and led to the Opium War of 1840.

After the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth, writes M.L. Clarke, Rome became a centre of her enemies, and every English traveller was apt to be regarded with suspicion.

Plants have been hunted since the days of the Pharaohs, writes William Seymour; but, in more recent times, two resolute Scottish botanists led particularly adventurous and courageous lives.