Volume 31 Issue 8 August 1981

Canaletto's England

Harriet Berry shows how the Venetian artist, Canaletto, who first came to England in 1746, was to give the English a new and lasting image of their land.

Royal Favouritism in London Building

London must be transformed into a place 'safe from fire and beautiful and magnificent' decreed James I – and Patrick Youngblood finds it was only the wealthy who were to be entrusted with the privilege of building such a city.

The Mystery of Francis Drake's Californian Voyage

Why was Francis Drake in the Pacific in the 1570s? Was the Golden Hind bound on a trade voyage or was there a deeper political motive? The documents are lost, but David Cressy feels the historian can still speculate.

The British Empire Exhibition of 1924

The Exhibition held in Wembley in 1924 was intended to herald a great Imperial revival - in fact, as Kenneth Walthew shows here, it was to prove an escapist delight from post-war gloom and retrenchment.