Political

One of Napoleon's most prominent enemies among authors cast the Duke, during the Allied Occupation of Paris, in the role of Saviour of France. She was not much mistaken, writes Harold Kurtz.

What was the “black thing” that palsied the character of the brave but highly unpopular monarch who was dethroned in 1688? Maurice Ashley queries a poisoned historical legacy.

John Terraine sheds fresh light on the principles at stake in the disputes between generals and politicians during the last year of the First World War.

John Raymond profiles a man whose forbears had fought to win the Republic. Henry Adams, however, witnessed and testified to the birth of a nation.

J.H.M. Salmon describes how lust for power was the consuming motive of Marie de Médicis' life, but also how she failed to identify her personal ambitions with the symbolic meaning of the French crown.

British missions to the Chinese Court had already run into many grievous difficulties. When a mission was despatched to Burma, writes Mildred Archer, they found their problems no less irksome.

Early in December 1854, a group of miners, led by a hot-headed Irish rebel, defied the forces of the Australian Government. For many Australians, writes T.R. Reese, this gallant but hopeless gesture still symbolizes democracy’s unending struggle to preserve the freedom of the common man.

David Mitchell introduces a seventeenth-century politician who hoped to see the art of government reduced to an exact science, free from “the noise and dirt of party strife.”

Neville Williams profiles Thomas Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk (1538-1572), a great territorial magnate, commanding fanatical affection and wielding an influence that was little less than absolute.

C.V. Wedgwood recounts the circumstances the Earl of Arundel’s Embassy to Germany in 1636 as recounted in William Crowne’s Diary, the Earl’s letters and other contemporary sources.