Political

Talleyrand, Part I

What he had always wanted to be, Talleyrand wrote in later life, was “the man of France”—not the representative of a party, a political system or a sovereign master. Does this ambition, asks Harold Kurtz, explain his various changes of allegiance, including his “betrayal” of Napoleon, for which many French historians cannot forgive him?

Sir John Bowring: The Radical Governor

A gifted utilitarian, and sometime Member of Parliament, Douglas Hurd writes that John Bowring spent ten tumultuous years in China where he believed in supporting the cause of progress with British gunboats.

Recollections of David Lloyd George, Part I

Lucy Masterman’s husband was one of Lloyd George’s closest associates during the formation of the National Health Insurance and the controversies over the Parliament Act of 1909-1911. Mrs. Masterman draws on the records she kept at the time to offer a vivid portrait of Lloyd George’s intuitive political genius.

Jean-Paul Marat

The famous French revolutionary was a graduate in medicine from St Andrews University, writes W.J. Fishman, and was once a teacher at a Non-conformist College in Warrington.

Henry Christophe: King of Haiti

During the aftermath of the French Revolution, writes C.E. Hamshere, a prosperous state arose in Haiti under the leadership of a powerful and gifted ruler.

Paris Exposition 1867

Bela Menczer describes the various intellectual and artistic personalities who conspired to produce the Exposition Universelle, in Paris, in 1867.