Political

The Long March

The traumatic but ultimately victorious march of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists ended on 22 October 1935.

The League of Nations: A League of its Own

The League of Nations has been much derided as a historical irrelevance, but it laid the foundations for an international court and established bodies that the United Nations maintains today, says Ruth Henig.

The Imperial Coronation of Charlemagne

At the beginning of the ninth century, Charlemagne—already the master of Western Europe—was crowned by a calculating Pope as the supreme sovereign of the Christian world. Peter Munz asks what the real significance of his new title really was?

Cromwell, Charles II and the Naseby: Ship of State

The fortunes of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II and the regard in which their successive regimes came to be held were mirrored in the fate of one of their mightiest naval vessels, as Patrick Little explains.

Pietro Pazzi: The Making of an Englishman

At a time of widespread concern about the patriotism of 'economic migrants' and political refugees, Peter Barber tells the story of one 19th-century immigrant whose affection for Britain grew as political crisis severed his attachment to home.

Lady Margaret Kennedy and John Maitland: The Lady and the Earl

Martin Greig reveals the intimate relationship between the powerful Earl of Lauderdale, Charles II's Secretary for Scotland in the 1660s, and a Scottish spinster who became the earl's 'Presbyterian conscience' during a tumultuous period for kirk and crown.