Feature

In 1759 a British army under General James Wolfe won a momentous battle on the Plains of Abraham. A neglected ingredient in Wolfe’s dramatic victory was the professionalism of the army he had helped to create.

The tactics adopted by the Gallic leader Vercingetorix to resist Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul played into Roman hands.

Sex, scandals and celebrity were all part of a blame and shame culture that existed in the 18th century, one that often fed off the misfortune of women at the hands of men. Prostitutes, courtesans and ladies with injured reputations took up the pen in retaliation.

At the end of the 19th century, British antiquarian Arthur Evans sought to ‘re-enchant’ the world with his utopian interpretation of Crete’s ancient Minoan civilisation.

In 1706 a little-known mathematics teacher named William Jones first used a symbol to represent the platonic concept of pi, an ideal that in numerical terms can be approached, but never reached.

In 1926 Umberto Nobile became a hero of Mussolini’s Italy when he piloted Roald Amundsen’s Norge over the North Pole. Two years later his reputation went down with his airship.

In 1381 England witnessed a medieval ‘summer of blood’ as the lower orders flexed their muscle in what became known as the Peasants’ Revolt.

Thomas Paine inspired and witnessed the revolutions that gave birth to the United States and destroyed the French monarchy. A genuinely global figure, he anticipated modern ideas on human rights, atheism and rationalism.