It is difficult to estimate how many English During the resplendent reign of Louis XIV, many English travellers explored Versailles—among them a philosopher, a famous bishop, a great architect and a gifted diplomatist-poet. Claire-Elaine Engel describes how each has left some vivid personal impressions of the court that revolved around the Sun King.
E. Badian writes that the efforts of Antiochus Epiphanes to Hellenize his dominions led to a revolt in Judaea under the leadership of the Hasmonaean house, known as the Maccabees, who succeeded in re-asserting Jewish law and the Jewish religion in traditional form.
Noel Goodwin remembers Joseph Haydn, who led a dedicated life of remarkable fertility and created “a method and style of musical architecture capable of such infinite variety that more than a century of orchestral music was directly based upon it.”
Dorothy Margaret Stuart introduces a grandee at the court of Edward IV, a warrior both on land and sea, and the first patron of English printing; Earl Rivers, who met his death in the sinister Castle of Pontefract at the orders of Richard III.
Meyrick H. Carré studies the reasons that led Francis Bacon, the distinguished philosopher and man of letters, to become in his political career a vehement upholder of absolute royal authority.
The monarchs of the East had developed an effective technique of establishing control of the Greek cities by volunteering to “liberate” them. This was a method, writes E. Badian, of which Roman statesmen quickly learned to take advantage.
C.R. Boxer describes how the Dutch East-India Company gave unity to the islands of Indonesia much as the English East-India Company laid the foundations of the British Raj—often unwittingly and by a series of gradual steps.
Christopher Lloyd marks the tercentenary of Robert Black, Cromwell’s “General at Sea,” whose name ranks with those of Drake and Nelson in English naval annals.
On March 9th, 1762, in Toulouse, a Huguenot merchant was broken on the wheel for a crime that he had not committed. “It is because I am a man,” declared Voltaire, that he undertook the defence of the unhappy Calas family. His efforts, writes Edna Nixon, produced a drastic reform of the French judicial system.
Today a ‘beautiful but broken shell’, the Parthenon has housed three very different cults – those of Athena, Allah and the Blessed Virgin – since it was first constructed in the fifth century BC. It was a Christian soldier, in the siege of 1687, who did most to destroy the sanctuary.
