Victorian

British democracy owes a debt to the country’s first civil rights movement, says Malcolm Chase.

Gerald Morgan introduces Byron’s friend and executor; a radical Whig and head of the East India Company during the Afghan troubles of 1835-43.

As Consul General for Great Britain in Egypt, Henry Salt established a friendly understanding with the free Albanian Viceroy Mohamed Ali. John Brinton describes how, through their relationship, Salt was able to rescue many treasures of ancient Egyptian art.

Barbara Kerr profiles a nineteenth-century country vicar who was a militant reformer in sewage and sanitation.

Stephen Usherwood recounts the lively reports sent from the goldfields of Yukon by Flora Shaw, the British journalist and writer, which began to appear in English newspapers in August 1898.

‘Unwearied in the office of friendship’, all his life Crabb Robinson was devoted to men of genius and faithfully recorded their behaviour, as Joanna Richardson here discusses.

J.M. Brereton introduces Pierre Louis Napolean Cavagnari, a soldier of French-Italian and Irish descent, who played a distinguished part in British relations with Afghanistan, eventually costing him his life.

In Spain, writes James Marshall-Cornwall, Melbourne’s government supported the Legitimists with an Auxiliary Legion.

George Russo describes how this enlightened priest undertook a double task - to convince the Australian government of its responsibilities and accustom the aborigines to modern life.

In 1851, writes Marjorie Sykes, there were over 30,000 hawkers and pedlars on the roads of Britain.