Birth of John Bright
The leading Victorian radical and Liberal politician John Bright was born on November 16th 1811.
Victorian
Victorian Jokes: The best in 19th-century humour
Lee Jackson of Victorian London selects some of his favourite Victorian jokes.
When Britain Still Believed in God
The Victorian era was an age of faith – which is why it was also a golden period of progress, argues Tim Stanley.
Crystal Palace: Reflections of Empire
Glittering monument to Britain’s colonial achievement or fragile symbol of a fragmenting imperial dream? Jan Piggott charts the efforts to make Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace flourish as an ‘Acropolis of Empire’.
From Georgian to Victorian
Nicholas Dixon asks whether there was a radical transition between the two eras.
Chekhov and Conservation
The great Russian author Anton Chekov drew inspiration from the countryside and explored the practical and spiritual impact of trees and the consequences of deforestation.
The Woman in White: A Novel for Hysterical Times
Wilkie Collins’ haunting mystery of false identity and female instability reflected one of the lunacy panics of the age. Sarah Wise looks at three events that inspired The Woman in White.
India: An Inspector Calls
Rosie Llewellyn-Jones recalls the Victorian economist who helped resolve the financial crisis in India after the Mutiny of 1857.
The Great Exhibition: Commerce & Christianity
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was not only a celebration of Victorian Britain’s scientific and economic pre-eminence but also a hymn to the religion that underpinned it, argues Geoffrey Cantor.