Britain

‘Larger than a peahen and smaller than a peacock’, Jahangir wrote in 1612. Geoffrey Powell describes how the bird reached England from America some decades before the Indian knew it.

J. LaVerne Anderson describes how the post of British Ambassador to the rulers of France has been a difficult assignment, and not only in the eighteenth century.

Robert W. Kenny describes how, on the death of Elizabeth I, an appeasing spirit entered British diplomacy.

G.W.S. Barrow describes how, 260 years ago, the Scottish people made a difficult but necessary choice.

C.V. Wedgwood assesses the impact of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 1869-1969

T.C. Owtram introduces Warren Hastings. After thirty years in the service of the East India Company, eleven of them as Governor-General, Hastings returned in 1785 to face impeachment at Westminster Hall

David Chandler describes a heroic episode during the War of the Spanish Succession.

Geoffrey Powell describes how, while Napoleon occupied Holland, the British seized the Dutch bases in Ceylon.

J.J.N. McGurk describes how vanity and the ambitions of families and religious houses prompted the widespread invention of documents upon property and genealogy.

H.T. Dickinson describes how, in his best-known work, Bolingbroke sought to produce a cure for present-day ills by rehearsing the virtues of an imaginary past.