During the 1850s, writes W. Bruce Lincoln, an intrepid Russian traveller penetrated hitherto almost unknown territory, making large collections of botanical and geographical specimens, and exploring twenty-three difficult mountain passes.
William Gardener describes how silks, tobacco and tea from China were exchanged across the deserts northwest of Peking for furs, cloth and leather from Asiatic Russia.
The temples of Paestum have long been admired. Only recently, writes Neil Ritchie, have archaeologists unearthed a wealth of associated works of art.
Robert Woodall describes how Palmerston lost office in February 1858 during the Anglo-French controversy over Orsini’s bomb plot.
In the late eighteenth century, writes Ray Swick, Americans began to settle in huge aromatic forests across the Appalachians.
L.W. Cowie takes a visit to the last of the great Elizabethan and Jacobean mansions of London, that once looked south across the Thames and survived until 1874.
The novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote Charlotte Lindgren, found much to criticize both in Great Britain and in his own country.
Joanna Richardson describes how, from the age of nine in 1828, Queen Victoria corresponded with her Uncle, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, King of the Belgians.
Francis Watson describes the long and adventurous history of the Koh-i-Noor; between the fourteenth century, when its existence first became known, and 1839, when, at Queen Victoria’s request, it joined the British Crown Jewels.
Gilbert John Millar describes how the foreign contingents employed by Henry VIII eventually became the mainstay of his military establishment.
