Cultural

Aram Bakshian Jr. profiles a true Venetian, Lorenzo Da Ponte, who, like his associate Casanova, had an extravagant and boldly adventurous career.

Odo Russell, writes Alec Randall, was Britain’s unofficial diplomatic agent at the Vatican during the years when Italy was unified and when the controversy took place over the Papal Syllabus.

On June 9th, 1774, a fête champêtre, magnificent even by eighteenth-century standards, attracted an appreciative concourse of the English nobility and gentry. Olive Fitzsimmons describes the event.

Frances Austin reads the lively late eighteenth century letters of a great surgeon’s apprentice to his family in Cornwall.

J.L. Kirby describes the reign of a sovereign with a ‘genius for popular kingship’; Henry V was probably the first English ruler to address his subjects in their native language.

Not until the second decade of the twentieth century, writes Alun C. Davies, was a standardised method of time-keeping established throughout Britain.

Robert Hermstorff describes how Goethe moved to Weimar in 1775 and during the rest of his long life made the small Saxon town the centre of German letters and learning.

In the 1880s, writes Ronald Rees, an English community brought with it to Canada hunting, horse-racing, cricket, tennis and rugby.

William Amelia describes how Baldassare Castiglione's popular book on courtly manners invoked the elegance and charm of Renaissance life, and went on to influence Europe for centuries.

L.W. Cowie takes the reader on a visit to London's Carlton House; an architectural gem with many royal connections and which was converted into a palace for the future George IV.