England

Windmills abounded in England from the twelfth century onwards. Terence Paul Smith describes how their bodies usually revolved on a vertical post so that the miller could face the sails into the wind.

Alan Haynes describes how this ‘wondrous, violent motion’ caused widespread alarm and produced a flood of moral and religious homilies.

Duchess by bigamy, but a Countess by marriage, Elizabeth Chudleigh found refuge from her marital troubles in St Petersburg, writes Anthony Cross.

L.W. Cowie describes what was, for seventy years, a key feature of the fashionable resort on the English south coast.

The English south coast lay at the mercy of smugglers, writes Christopher Lloyd, until a full-scale blockade from 1817 gradually brought them under control.

An elaborate hierarchy maintained the royal household of Elizabeth I, writes Alan Haynes, but there was much pilfering and graft among the purveyors of domestic goods.

Neil Ritchie describes the long and busy career of the son of the famous Earl of Leicester: Robert Dudley sought employment with an Italian Grand Duke and distinguished himself as navigator, map-maker, naval architect and builder of maritime fortifications.

The novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote Charlotte Lindgren, found much to criticize both in Great Britain and in his own country.

Joanna Richardson describes how, from the age of nine in 1828, Queen Victoria corresponded with her Uncle, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, King of the Belgians.

Gilbert John Millar describes how the foreign contingents employed by Henry VIII eventually became the mainstay of his military establishment.