Britain

The Victorian era was an age of faith – which is why it was also a golden period of progress, argues Tim Stanley.

As the Coalition government marks its first anniversary Martin Pugh sees its blend of Liberal and Conservative policies mirrored in the long and chequered career of the most famous of all 20th-century prime ministers.

Almost none of the large outdoor artworks commissioned for the 1951 Festival of Britain has survived. Alan Powers discusses one that did, a mural by John Piper, which returns to London’s South Bank this month.

Patrick Little celebrates the life and career of a major historian of Early Modern Britain.

In the interests of historical research Lucy Worsley adopted the dental hygiene habits of previous centuries.

Richard Cavendish recreates the circumstances of Horatio Nelson's victory at Copenhagen on April 2nd, 1801.

Richard Almond describes how some rare wall paintings help shed light on medieval hunting.

As a major new exhibition on the Aesthetic Movement opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Richard Cavendish explores Bedford Park, the garden suburb inspired by the movement’s ideals.

James Boswell, Samuel Johnson’s future biographer, found Glasgow a dull place. Yet it was at the city’s university that he came into contact with the political economist Adam Smith, whose insights forced the student to grapple with competing claims on his conscience, as Robert Zaretsky explains.

Jacqueline Riding examines how a 19th-century painting, created almost 150 years after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, has come to dominate the iconography of that event.