Political

The acute housing crisis of mid-Victorian Britain generated stormy opinions about the nature of state intervention and the need for ‘wholesome despotism’.

On 1 October 1868 King Mongkut – who reigned as Rama IV – passed away having trod a delicate course to keep Thailand free of European empires.

The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett picks through the fragments of George Villiers, James VI & I’s favourite mistake.

On 27 September 1130 a Norman usurper gained a crown from a desperate pope and the Kingdom of Sicily was born.

American democracy has been haunted by the spectre of a Caesar-type figure since the birth of the republic. Have such fears ever been justified?

Uzbekistan was a product of Islamic modernism and Soviet might. Free from the latter, the nation now seeks to foreground the Young Bukharans.

Who should claim Scotland’s royal jewels? After the forced abdication of Mary, Queen of Scots, the answer was not clear cut.

The French Resistance sought liberation above all else. But what should the postwar nation look like? The question was as old as the Fall of France itself.

Tyrant and usurper: the last wills of Richard II and Henry IV give rare insight into the medieval monarchs who wore the crown.

In Catherine de’ Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen, Mary Hollingsworth helps the pragmatic queen escape her ‘black legend’.