Britain

Antonia Fraser describes how no murder in the course of history has aroused more argument than the assassination of the Queen of Scots’ husband at Kirk o’Field on the night of February 9th, 1567.

Alex Keller describes how the closing years of the sixteenth century and the early decades of the seventeenth marked the first period in England of important technological advance.

Past services cannot determine future policy, writes Brian Bond, but the record of the Territorial Army suggests that the force has always given returns out of all proportion to the small amount invested in it.

H.T. Dickinson reflects on the Abbe Guiscard’s assassination attempt on Queen Anne’s chief Minister had long-term effects on the Tory party.

Colin Martin describes how, on the frontiers of Caledonia eighteen centuries ago, the Romans kept watch from camp and wall over turbulent northern tribes.

John Terraine sheds fresh light on the principles at stake in the disputes between generals and politicians during the last year of the First World War.

In the year AD 60, Boudicca, a woman of the royal house of the Iceni led a fierce British revolt against the Roman occupation, during which Londinium was reduced to ashes.

Established partly in response to the long-feared French invasion and partly to quell unrest at home, the yeomanry were increasingly used by the authorities to intervene on the side of employers in disputes and riots. The ensuing armed clashes present the clearest example of class warfare in early 19th-century Britain, says Nick Mansfield.  

Not until the Revolution had collapsed from within, and the quarrelsome heirs of the Long Parliament had forfeited the right to govern, was the way clear for the restoration of a Stuart sovereign. The return of the monarchy, writes Austin Woolrych, was welcomed with enthusiasm as an alternative to social anarchy.

Large numbers of West Africans came to Britain to study in the postwar years. Many placed their children in the care of white, working-class families. Jordanna Bailkin describes how it was not just Britain’s diplomatic relationships that were transformed at the end of empire but also social and personal ones.