Victorian

Ernest A. Gray analyses the Navy’s role on land and sea in the Crimean Campaign.

Unpopular in the country at large, neglected by successive governments, the Victorian army was slowly brought up to date, writes Brian Bond, despite military obscurantism and strenuous bureaucratic opposition.

The history of insurance reflects the rapid development of commercial and industrial Britain. Nicholas Lane describes how its pioneers broke down the monopolies that had existed since the days of the South Sea Bubble.

The result of the Seven Weeks’ War in 1866 subordinated the Austrian Empire to Prussian ambitions. Brian Bond describes the last lightning victory in the Napoleonic manner, until Hitler’s blitzkrieg of 1940.

On March 8th, 1894, Lord Rosebery took office as Prime Minister. John Raymond describes his fifteen difficult months in power.

Barrington’s admiration for the humanity, wit and decisiveness of his chief are affectionately apparent in this portrait of the great Whig Prime Minister at the height of his powers.

A further selection from a memoir Barrington composed towards the close of his life and transmitted to his kinsman, the third Earl of Durham. Through his connections with leading political families, and official appointments he held at 10 Downing Street and the Treasury, Barrington was in an excellent position from which to observe and comment on the personalities of the nineteenth century including Brougham, Melbourne, Peel and Gladstone.

Joanna Richardson describes how the last Emperor of the French died at Chislehurst, Kent; his son was killed in the British Zulu war.

Terence H. O'Brien describes how Alfred Milner, later the apostle of the British Empire, paid a revealing visit as a young man to Ireland, then in the throes of the Home Rule struggle.

Peter Stansky & William Abrahams describe how, after Tennyson’s death, the problem of finding a new Poet Laureate perturbed successive British governments.