‘Whoever is Lord in Malacca, has his hand on the throat of Venice’, wrote a European traveller during the period of the city's greatest glory. G.P. Dartford brings us back to a time when Malacca dominated the trade routes of the East.
For nearly 400 years, London's citizens poured down from the streets to hold a frost fair upon the solid ice of the Thames.
At a time when a Communist government is trying to destroy all links between Romania and the West, Radu R. Florescu surveys the facts and legends about his country's past.
L.R. Betcherman describes how, early in the seventeenth century, an English royal favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, despatched his Dutch agent to Italy to form a sumptuous art-collection.
Was King Harold slain by a Norman arrow that pierced his eye? Charles H. Gibbs-Smith adduces a powerful argument for correcting the traditional story.
The year 1265 marked the climax in the fortunes of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Having defeated the forces of King Henry III during the previous summer, and captured his son and heir, Prince Edward, the Earl was the effective master of baronial England. But his dominance did not endure for long. In May, Prince Edward escaped from his guards and, on August 4th, he overwhelmed Montfort's army at the Battle of Evesham; the Earl himself was killed in the engagement. For six months of this period, the Montfort household rolls have survived. Originally compiled for his wife, the Princess Eleanor, sister of Henry III, they present a remarkably intimate picture of domestic and social life in a powerful thirteenth-century nobleman's family, writes Margaret Wade Labarge.
Though he was a less inspired architect than Wren or Vanbrugh, writes Tudor Edwards, Hawksmoor’s life and work are inextricably interwoven with theirs and he contributed largely to their great achievement.
Lawrence Stone describes how, towards the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign, a young nobleman laid violent and successful suit to the only daughter of a wealthy merchant and money-lender, whose will he is thought to have advantageously suppressed.
C.R. Boxer writes that, taken in conjunction, the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery in the fifteenth century form one of the watersheds of history, comparable to the twentieth-century conquest of space.
During the minority of Louis XV, France was ruled by his predecessor’s nephew, a good-natured and quick-witted prince, but indolent, indifferent and self-indulgent. Philip’s ascent to power raised high hopes of a radical reform in French domestic policy, writes J.H.M. Salmon.
