Political

The news of Waterloo shocked American readers, writes Donald D. Horward, and most writers and editors refused to believe Wellington’s famous dispatch of June 19th, 1815.

During the American Revolution, writes Wallace Brown, several thousand Loyalists sought refuge in Britain — ‘sad victims’ of events.

Ian Young explains the many guises of Russia's Romanov ruler: in Napoleon’s caustic phrase, “the Talma of the North”; according to Chateaubriand, “a strong soul and a feeble character”; styled by Pushkin as, “the Sphinx who took his riddle with him to the grave”; Alexander began his life as a liberal visionary and ended it as an impassioned champion of the autocratic principle.

Edna Bradlow writes that while Paul Kruger felt he had an obligation to protect his country's moral right on behalf of the Transvaal Republic, Chamberlain, speaking for his own countrymen, declared that the issue involved both “our supremacy in South Africa and our existence as a great power”.

During the early months of 1794, writes Vera Watson, in the throes of the fierce struggle against revolutionary France, the British Government received dramatic information which it treated as a top-level secret—two assassins were on their way to London, entrusted with the task of eliminating both Pitt and his royal master.

Wit, diner-out, country clergyman and pugnacious liberal journalist, Sydney Smith, said Lord Melbourne, had ‘done more for the Whigs than all the clergy put together.’ Joanna Richardson revisits his reputation.

H.J. Perkin traces the development of England's long love affair with newspapers.

Just over a hundred years ago, writes William Watson, an unprovoked attack on a party of inoffensive Westerners was followed by violent reprisals.

During the sultry summer of 1911, writes Frank Hardie, a conflict between Commons and Lords presented King George V with one of the most difficult problems of his reign.

Michael Jenkins describes how the use to which the nobles put their power and wealth was responsible for the violence of the Revolution in 1917.