Victorian

Guy Fawkes Celebrations in Victorian Exeter

November 5th had traditionally provided an outlet for the expression of popular attitudes towards religion in the city of Exeter. In this article Roger Swift examines the particular fervour of the celebrations during the Victorian period despite efforts by the authorities to control them.

Spas: Pleasure or Penance?

Taking the waters became a Victorian passion and spa towns flourished. In this article the first prize winner in History Today's Essay Competition Pamela Steen, a student at the Open University, describes the pleasure and the pains of this fashion.

Mary Seacole

Ziggi Alexander and Audrey Dewjee consider the life of a remarkable Victorian woman.

Gilbert & Sullivan and the Victorian Age

Ian Bradley shows that the characters and plots of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas reveal much that is of interest to the historian about certain individuals and institutions of the Victorian era.

Cecil Rhodes

The life of Rhodes - an empire-builder, arch risk-taker, megalomaniac mine-owner and namesake of Zimbabwe's pre-independence antecedant, Rhodesia.

Prince Albert and the British Constitution

At first allowed by the British politicians “only just as much space as he could stand upon” Queen Victoria’s Consort, nevertheless, succeeded in setting the pattern for modern constitutional monarchy, as G.H.L. LeMay here shows.

Religion in the Victorian City

The census of religious worship taken in England and Wales in 1851 gives a unique insight into the religious habits of our Victorian predecessors which, as Bruce Coleman explains, is very much at variance with the popular image of them.

Two Invasions of Afghanistan

'Monumentally bad diplomacy, worse strategy, chaotic military organisation and inept generalship' - Thomas Tulenko describes how great powers have failed in their attacks on Afghanistan. Penned as Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul in December 1979, the BBC's David Loyn offered his own analysis thirty years later.