A further selection from a memoir Barrington composed towards the close of his life and transmitted to his kinsman, the third Earl of Durham. Through his connections with leading political families, and official appointments he held at 10 Downing Street and the Treasury, Barrington was in an excellent position from which to observe and comment on the personalities of the nineteenth century including Brougham, Melbourne, Peel and Gladstone.
Because of his vision of New Amsterdam as the most important city on the Atlantic seaboard, writes Arnold Whitridge, Stuyvesant stands out in American history as the most memorable of the colonial governors.
For some sixty years during the eighteenth century, writes Sarah Searight, Louisiana was a colony owing allegiance to the King of France.
Napoleon’s attempt to form a second and more liberal empire was, like Waterloo, a close-run thing and “came nearer to success than is usually allowed.”
Joanna Richardson describes how the last Emperor of the French died at Chislehurst, Kent; his son was killed in the British Zulu war.
William Allan introduces the Napoleonic military genius; in Napier’s words, ‘the best loved Frenchman England ever fought’.
After the dismissal of popular ministers in 1792, writes M.J. Sydenham, a widespread conviction that the King was bent on thwarting the Revolution led to the invasion of his palace by the Parisian mob.
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.
