History Today

Joanna Richardson describes how Queen Victoria wrote as she certainly must have talked - with common sense, some simplicity, much shrewdness, and occasional indiscretions.

During the eighteenth century, writes Bill Hooper, ‘barbaric anarchy’ reigned at Eton.

Once the hall of Richard II’s palace, Westminster Hall became a centre of the British judicial system and, writes Leonard W. Cowie, a popular meeting-place for Londoners.

‘A true moderate’, Madame de Staël sought ‘to formulate the theory and effect the practice of real political freedom’. By M.J. Sydenham and Frances S. Montgomery.

Under the terms of the Armistice, writes Geoffrey Bennett, the ships of the German High Sea Fleet were interned and not surrendered. Hence they were manned by their own crews, who eight months later were able to carry out “an act of treachery.”

Panama, and its American-controlled Canal Zone, have lately been the scene of a revolutionary flutter. W.H. Chaloner asks, what is the history of the building of the Canal, and of the United States connexion with it?

In 1791, while the French Revolution was nearing its climax, the Tory Prime Minister was deeply concerned about Russian designs upon Poland and Turkey. The Younger Pitt's policy of calling a halt to Russian expansion, writes John Ehrman, led to vehement political schism in Britain.

Like all military dictators, Bonaparte understood the martial importance of well-designed uniforms.

“They are as good as I could write now,” said the Duke in 1834. “They show the same attention to details — to the pursuit of all the means, however small, that could promote success.”

For the 18th-century tourist, there was a strange beauty in rugged industrial landscapes, which moved them to quote poetry and dash off pages of vivid descriptive prose.