Britain

1926: Social Costs of the Mining Dispute

In 1926 the mining dispute led to the General Strike. Chris Wrigley writes how the memory of the hardship of those months has left a permanent legacy of bitterness in industrial relations in the coal industry.

Colonel Blimp's England

David Low, the cartoonist, met Horatio Blimp, a retired Colonel, in a Turkish bath near Charing Cross in the early 1930s. Many agree with C.S. Lewis that Colonel Blimp was 'the most characteristic expression of the English temper in the period between the two wars.'

Mr Punch and the Iron Duke

The Duke of Wellington proved a gift to the cartoonists of 'Punch' - he was a figure the magazine's readership would recognise, and he did not look unlike Mr Punch himself.

Living the Fishing

'It's no fish ye're buying - it's men's lives', wrote Sir Walter Scott, and looking at the fishing industry in Scotland in the last century involves a vivid recreation of the hard life of the isolated fishing communities, their work and their family life.