Literature

Wit, diner-out, country clergyman and pugnacious liberal journalist, Sydney Smith, said Lord Melbourne, had ‘done more for the Whigs than all the clergy put together.’ Joanna Richardson revisits his reputation.

H.J. Perkin traces the development of England's long love affair with newspapers.

Admired by Lord Melbourne; and, later, the author of two popular novels, Emily Eden was one of the liveliest of correspondents. By Prudence Hannay.

Michael Glover investigates the early modern sources of the English reputation as the most indefatigable writers of letters in the world.

‘The pleasure of books possessed me from childhood’ wrote this twelfth-century historian. Among other work, William of Malmesbury, writes J.J.N. McGurk, produced an Historia Novella, extending until 1142.

As a means of national survival, write Diana Spearman and M. Naim Turfan, Atatürk preached the whole-hearted acceptance of contemporary civilization.

Francis Austen served throughout the Napoleonic Wars and, writes David Hopkinson, lived until the age of ninety-one; an Admiral of the Fleet.

Early in the 1650s, writes Alan Haynes, this intrepid noblewoman took the ‘extraordinary’ step of publishing her own poems.

J.H.M. Salmon profiles an important - but largely forgotten - historian of the ancien régime, whose main theme was expansion in Asia and in the New World.

During the 1730s, writes Michael Paffard, the modest and unassuming Duck achieved considerable fame.