Victorian

Walter Bagehot

Banker, economist, editor and critic, Bagehot “was the antithesis of the grand Victorian man of letters.”

The Agnostic Saladin

Atheism today is widely perceived to be the opposite of spirituality. This assumption is turned on its head when we look at the neglected origins of the Victorian ‘non-believing’ movement, epitomised by the controversial freethinker, William Stewart Ross, says Alastair Bonnett. 

British Prime Ministers: Gladstone

Four times Prime Minister, Gladstone owes his great reputation, A.F. Thompson argues, less to his achievements in office than to his character and personality.

The Search for the Nile

J.H. Plumb shows how, between 1857 and 1888, after much controversy, the mystery of the Nile’s source was finally solved by the successive discoveries of Speke, Burton, Livingstone and Stanley.