Political

The Myth of Napoleon III

“It is time that the abuse of his enemies should be appreciated in its true light, and not accepted as impartial history merely because they happened to be distinguished men.” By Theodore Zeldin.

The First Japanese Mission to England

In 1862 a Japanese official mission visited England, nine years after the re-opening of their country to the world. Carmen Blacker describes how their strange attire and ‘inscrutable reticence’ surprised the mid-Victorian public.

The Easter Rising, 1916

A.P. Ryan describes how, each Easter, the Irish Republic commemorates the anniversary of the April Rising in Dublin when a short-lived Provisional Government of the Republic was proclaimed.

The Anglo-Russian Entente

In 1907, writes A.W. Palmer, two empires that had three times been on the verge of war in the preceding thirty years reached a hopeful accommodation.

Sir Robert Peel: Patron of The Arts

“The son of a cotton millionaire scouring the auction rooms of Europe and building lavishly in the latest architectural style,” the Tory leader was a highly representative early nineteenth-century figure. By J. Mordaunt Crook.

Samuel Whitbread

A prosperous member of the commercial middle class, writes Roger Fulford, Whitbread made his name as the champion of radicalism and the persistent advocate of unpopular causes.

Russia’s December Revolution, 1825

Though the Decembrist rising against the Tsar was quickly put down, writes Michael Whittock, the officers and land-owners who led it created an heroic revolutionary tradition that influenced Russians of every class.

Robespierre

No other leader of the French Revolution held the centre of the revolutionary stage so long as Robespierre. George Rudé portrays him as its personification and guiding spirit — a man of lofty aspirations, though according to the popular legend a fanatical man of blood.