Literature

During the first half of the thirteenth century, Matthew Paris recorded in words and drawings the events of world history. W.N. Bryant tells his story.

Mollie Gillen describes how Queen Victoria’s father was a bibliophile as well as a military commander and a colonial governor.

Theodore Besterman describes everyday life for “the polymorphic chameleon, the omniscient polymath.”

In the second century A.D. North Africa played an important role in imperial Roman life

F. Bastian finds that in composing his lively Tour, Defoe drew upon memories of journeys he had actually made and also upon the writings of earlier observers.

Michael Strachan introduces one of the most conspicuous members of this celebrated Jacobean drinking and dining club centred on the Mermaid Tavern in London; the eccentric ‘legstretcher’ Thomas Coryate.

Harold F. Hutchison compares fact with fiction in Shakespeare’s historical dramas.

Robert Habsland introduces an intrepid traveller, an appreciative tourist and an ardent advocate of feminism; Lady Mary was the first distinguished woman of letters that England had seen.

Between the coming of St. Patrick and the arrival of the Normans art, literature and religion flourished in a country that had no organised central government.