Political

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.

Public Opinion Comes of Age: Reform of the Libel Law in the Eighteenth Century

A series of cases over a period of sixty years had raised the question of whether juries could pronounce on the substance of charges of libel and sedition or merely on the facts of publication. H.M. Lubasz writes how Fox’s Libel Act of 1791 put an end to doubt and thereby admitted the public to a larger vote in political affairs.

Noel ‘Gracchus’ Babeuf, Prophet of Elitism

The legend that Babeuf had created and the doctrines of Babouvism became a powerful force in nineteenth-century Europe. W.J. Fishman writes how, among those whom it inspired, were the authors of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Mohammed Ali: Pasha of Egypt

For forty years, ruler of an alien country, Mohammed Ali attempted a revolution from which Egypt might have emerged into the twentieth century “as a small-scale Japan.”  

Lenin's Journey

Lenin’s return to Russia by German agency in April 1917, writes David Woodward, was one of the turning points in 20th-century history.

John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare

During the last decades of the eighteenth century, the Ascendancy in Ireland, writes William D. Griffin, was dominated by Lord Clare, a figure both reviled and admired.