Britain

Ann Dewar looks back at the Parliamentary debate over the introduction of Daylight Saving Hours, tabled in 1916 by Sir Henry Norman.

The tall army recruits known as the Potsdam Giants, F.L. Carsten writes, played a considerable part in the British diplomacy during the early 18th century, and the efforts of the Prussian recruiting sergeants to procure men of the desired size extended to the British Isles.

A discussion between Napoleon, exiled in St. Helena, and Henry Ellis, returning with Lord Amherst’s embassy to China, about England's international standing.

Stephen Bates on the divisions that split Peel’s Tory administration in the mid-1840s, resonant of splits in the Conservative Party today.

Postwar Britain’s relationship with its past was laid bare in a long-running television show, argues Tim Stanley.

The term ‘Cobbett and Hunt’ was shorthand for radical politics in the early 19th century, but the petty hatred that developed between the two men had a devastating effect on the outcome of the 1832 Reform Act, says Penny Young.

Tim Pat Coogan points the finger of blame for the Great Famine at ministers in Lord Russell’s government, which came to power in 1846, and sees echoes of the disaster in the Republic’s current economic plight.

Roger Hudson pictures British gunboat diplomacy in Egypt in 1882.

Victoria Gardner looks back at earlier attitudes to Britain’s press freedom and how the withdrawal of the Licensing Act of 1662 spawned a nation of news addicts.

Duff Cooper examines the consistencies and differences between two centuries’ worth of Prime Ministers and asks, 'Has there been a truly great statesman among them?’