England

Lansing Collins describes how, in honour of a previous gift sent in the other direction, Elizabeth I presented Sultan Mohammed III with an elaborate clock, surmounted by singing birds that shook their wings.

After the Romans left and the Anglo-Saxons arrived, the south-west of England became the predominant kingdom. William Seymour traces the growth of the Kingdom of Wessex from the early sixth century.

The failure of the Plot, writes Cyril Hamshere, forms a complex story of espionage and counter-espionage; its events caused Elizabeth I to give up all ideas of restoring Mary Queen of Scots to the Scottish throne.

James I was a firm believer in Christian unity; Dorothy Boyd Rush describes his distrust of extremists, Catholic or Protestant.

Francis Austen served throughout the Napoleonic Wars and, writes David Hopkinson, lived until the age of ninety-one; an Admiral of the Fleet.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writes Marjorie Sykes, the arrival of migrant labourers, who often visited the same district year after year, was a distinctive feature of English country-life.

Through the marriage of a baronet and a scrivener’s heiress, writes Francis Sheppard, the Grosvenors eventually became the wealthiest family in Europe.

Early in the 1650s, writes Alan Haynes, this intrepid noblewoman took the ‘extraordinary’ step of publishing her own poems.

In 1567, permission for the holding of ‘a very rich Lottery General’ in England was granted by an increasingly cash-strapped Elizabeth I.

Tracked down to a ‘hut in the cavern of a rock’, writes J.J.N. McGurk, Desmond met his death at the hands of fellow Irishmen.