On March 9th, 1762, in Toulouse, a Huguenot merchant was broken on the wheel for a crime that he had not committed. “It is because I am a man,” declared Voltaire, that he undertook the defence of the unhappy Calas family. His efforts, writes Edna Nixon, produced a drastic reform of the French judicial system.
Far more interesting than Byron's romantic hero, who also inspired a celebrated circus act, is the real Mazeppa, as described in this article by L.R. Lewitter.
D.M. Walmsley analyses the plentiful artistic and personal connections between the explorations of the Virginia company and the Bard.
A study of the hostile legends, immortalized in Shakespeare’s tragic drama, that have gathered around the real historical figure of Macbeth.
Both before and after the fall of the Republic, Roman satirists give us an extraordinarily vivid picture of the society in which they lived, with its materialism, its opportunism, its unceasing pursuit of power and wealth.
The poet was appointed on July 16th, 1913.
Crispin Andrews finds echoes of one of Sherlock Holmes’ most celebrated mysteries in a tale of 18th-century France.
Though dull in places and difficult to translate, Hugh Thomas writes, Don Quixote’s refreshing realism once made Cervantes the most widely read foreign writer in England. But will his most famous work endure as literature?
J.J.N. McGurk describes how Gerald’s later years were filled with his excellent books on Wales and his unsuccessful struggle for a bishopric.
For a few years an impoverished barrister became one of the most effective orators and journalists of the French Revolution, writes John Hartcup.
