Political

In his career as rake and satirist, writes John Redwood, Rochester illustrated both the vices and virtues of the Restoration court.

Peter Stansky & William Abrahams describe how, after Tennyson’s death, the problem of finding a new Poet Laureate perturbed successive British governments.

The supreme direction of the First World War has remained a matter of controversy; in this essay, John Terraine contrasts Lloyd George’s hopes with the manner of their realization.

The MP was ejected on January 19th, 1764.

J.D. Scott describes how a London banker, of Danish origin, played a large part in financing the unification of Italy.

E.E.Y. Hales describes Europe's premier revolutionary between the years 1835 and 1860, who was inspired by patriotism, belief in democracy, and lofty religious ideals.

Georgina Battiscombe introduces the Dean of Windsor; the wisest of Queen Victoria’s private counsellors and a relation of the Duke of Wellington.

‘If this Empire seems an evil thing to me, it is not because I hate the British...’ B.G. Gokhale on Gandhi’s attitudes to empire upon the centenary of his birth.

In 18th-century British politics, eloquence might change votes on the spot. Loren Reid describes how the voice of Whig politician Charles James Fox often did exactly that.

Donald Read describes how, during the 1830s and 1840s an Irishman, claiming royal descent, became the hero of British working men in the Chartist campaign for universal suffrage and equal Parliamentary representation.