Political

King George III: A Study in Personality

A man of deep convictions, George III ruled at a time “when kings were still expected to govern. That he failed to acquire “true notions of common things”, Lewis Namier writes, was “perhaps the deepest cause of his tragedy.”

A Kingdom at Stake, 1553

Four hundred years ago the Duke of Northumberland made his vain attempt to exclude Mary and Elizabeth Tudor from the succession in favour of Jane Grey. S.T. Bindoff reconstructs the circumstances and development of this daring and ingenious plot and produces a new document, throwing light on it, which he recently discovered in the Archives at Brussels.

Egypt from Cromer to Neguib

C.H. Brown presents his study of the political and economic background to mid-twentieth century Egyptian nationalism.

Country House Radicals, 1590-1660

Revolutionary impulses do not always originate in proletarian discontent. Hugh Trevor-Roper's article traces 17th-century radicalism to a very different social source.

The First Earl of Shaftesbury

At one time a member of Charles II's notorious Cabal, Anthony Ashley Cooper later became the much maligned leader of the Protestant and Parliamentary opposition to the last two Stuart kings. By J.H. Plumb.

The Budget and the Lords: The Crisis of 1910-11

The crisis of 1909-11 involved two General Elections and a threat to flood the House of Lords with newly created Liberal peers. It ended, as Steven Watson notes here, in a triumph for the progenitors of the modern welfare state.

Hogarth’s Election Series

Peter Quennell says Hogarth’s great survey of the Humours of an Election is one of the masterpieces of English 18th century painting

Ivan the Terrible

The contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I, Ivan IV was the real founder of modern Russia, and, Jules Menken writes, the originator of the disciplinary system by means of which many Russian rulers since have held, their power.