Britain

Lord Odo Russell and Bismarck

For thirteen years, writes Alec Randall, Odo Russell was British Ambassador in Berlin where he was an appreciative critic of Bismarck’s policies.

John Company and the Evangelical Influence

The East India Company, writes R. Cecil, had at first shown a ‘modest interest’ in the civilization of their native subjects; but Evangelical pressure groups recommended a very different attitude.

Johan Zoffany

Versatile artist and vagrant man of the world, Johan Zoffany has left us a vivid and exquisitely detailed record of the late eighteenth-century social scene from Scotland to the Indian subcontinent. By Aram Bakshian Jr.

I.K. Brunel, Engineer, 1859

Uniquely of engineers, the reputation of Brunel lives on, commemorated by a university, dockyards, steamships, and countless other works of his discipline. But what, asks Walter Minchinton, were his achievements?

Greenwich and Standard Time

Not until the second decade of the twentieth century, writes Alun C. Davies, was a standardised method of time-keeping established throughout Britain.

Great Strafford?

C.V. Wedgwood analyses the life, death, and influence of Thomas Wentworth, first earl of Strafford.

Cycling Eighty Years Ago

David Rubinstein describes a change in social habits when the new bicycle replaced the old Penny Farthing.