Volume 13 Issue 12 December 1963

A solid middle-class clan who exported English wool to foreign markets, the Celys have left behind them a graphic record of their private affairs and shrewd commercial dealings, as Alison Hanham here finds.

Prompted by news of a French defeat in 1809, the British Government launched an offensive expedition against the Low Countries which ended in gallant failure. By Anthony Brett-James.

Michael Srigley describes how, on November 30th, 1718, one of the foremost soldiers of the age was shot while besieging a fortress in Norway. Did he succumb to a stray bullet, or was he assassinated?

George Woodcock describes how, in opposition to Portuguese, Dutch and British intruders, the highland kingdom of Kandy in Ceylon flourished under a succession of Buddhist rulers almost until the year of Waterloo.

An interim appraisal, written by Alan Hodge, of the career of a Prime Minister who had just left office after nearly seven years in power.

E.G. Dunning finds that traditional football was a game with few rules, played riotously through the streets and across country. The nineteenth century saw its evolution on the playing fields of the public schools into the two main forms we know today.

I.F. Clarke describes how the eighteenth century saw the beginnings of popular predictive fiction that attempted, in terms of politics or science, to forecast the life of later centuries.