Victorian

Rudyard Kipling’s imperialism was more complex than the line, ‘Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.’

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.

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.

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

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.

It is through reading the letters that the soldiers sent home, argues Frank Emery, that “the Victorian rank and file cease to be a mute and anonymous body of men marching past in scarlet or khaki columns.”

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

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.

Graham Seal explores the life and legend of Ned Kelly.

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.