England

William Seymour describes how a large area of Dorset and Wiltshire, abounding in deer, was hunted by King John and granted to Robert Cecil by James I.

At the end of the sixteenth century, writes David N. Durant, an ostentatious but simple-minded German Duke began pestering Queen Elizabeth to grant him the noblest of all English Orders.

Clarendon’s great ‘History’ was composed largely in exile and published after his death. Hugh Trevor-Roper discusses how the historian had originally intended this great work to be private political advice to the King.

Dianne Ebertt Beeaff explains the disappearance from view of Anglo-Saxon family names from modern English life.

York was in the heart of Royalist country at the beginning of the English Civil War. William Thurlow describes how it became the King’s capital.

Ian Beckwith describes how one of the chief first settlers of Virginia came from Lincolnshire farming stock.

Priest, poet and journalist, Blanco White escaped from Spain in 1810. Martin Murphy describest his last thirty years, spent in London, Oxford, Dublin and Liverpool.

David Mannings describes how the painters of the eighteenth century conducted their studios and sittings.

James Marshall-Cornwall describes a Tudor adventure, ultimately unsuccessful: Willoughby perished on the Kola peninsula; Chancellor reached Moscow and was received by Ivan the Terrible.

Joanna Richardson describes the two visits of Zola to England. The writer first arrived in 1893 and again, five years later, during the Dreyfus Case.