Britain

Long excluded from public business, King Edward showed, when he came to the throne, a remarkable grasp of foreign affairs. He was, as A.P. Ryan says, “a good European and a lover of peace.”

The English royal line has included several notable collectors of art, as Doreen Agnew here documents.

M.G. Brock surveys the political landscape in Britain in 1837.

J.A.R. Pimlott studies the development of the Christmas Spirit—from Pagan Saturnalia to Victorian family party

While it is right to seek justice for those tortured and mistreated during the Kenyan Emergency of the 1950s, attempts to portray the conflict as a Manichean one are far too simplistic, argues Tim Stanley.

The crisis of 1909-11 involved two General Elections and a threat to flood the House of Lords with newly created Liberal peers. It ended, as Steven Watson notes here, in a triumph for the progenitors of the modern welfare state.

J.W.N. Watkins illustrates how the great individualist thinkers of the 17th century had a profound effect upon the development of modern Europe.

Accused of cowardice at the Battle of Minden, and often-cast for the role of villain when he was Colonial Secretary, Lord George Germain, writes Eric Robson, nevertheless had many of the qualities of a successful statesman.

R.J. White introduces Humphry Davy: the inventor of the safety-lamp and one of Britain's greatest chemists was by temperament a romantic poet and philosopher.

Arthur Bryant looks at how “The Bones of Shire and State” were formed before the Normans came.