Cultural

Priest, poet and journalist, Blanco White escaped from Spain in 1810. Martin Murphy describest his last thirty years, spent in London, Oxford, Dublin and Liverpool.

Prudence Hannay recounts the life of the Bostonian who first set sail for Britain in April 1815. Ticknor would go on to pay his homage to and became the good friend of many European intellectuals. Among those he met were Byron, Scott, Goethe, Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael.

As advocate, diplomatist and historian, writes Neil Ritchie, Aeneas Silvius was a much-travelled international figure before he became Pope.

Michael Glover describes how Vienna in 1815 was the scene of endless entertainment for European rulers and their delegations.

Besides the Royal Academy, write Sonia & Vivian Lipman, the Somerset House building housed the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries.

Across the Pacific, writes C.M. Yonge, from northern Japan to the Californian coastline, the relentless hunt for the sea-otter’s precious fur had international consequences.

Andrew Jackson was the first President to be a ‘Westerner’ and, writes Larry Gragg, his inauguration in Washington ‘belonged to the people’.

Born in Brunswick, Louis Weltje became cook to the Prince of Wales in the 1780s and landlord of his Marine Pavilion at Brighton. L.W. Cowie describes his life and times.

For centuries before independence in 1877 the Romanian principalities led a precarious life of their own, writes Kenneth Johnstone.

Since its foundation, writes Ian Bradley, the Old Vic theatre became in turn a drinking den, a temperance hall, and the home of serious ballet and drama.