France

Robert Woodall describes how Palmerston lost office in February 1858 during the Anglo-French controversy over Orsini’s bomb plot.

Gilbert John Millar describes how the foreign contingents employed by Henry VIII eventually became the mainstay of his military establishment.

The ungainly princess from the Palatinate was an unlikely bride for Louis XIV’s brother, writes Nis A. Petersen, but her frank nature and resourceful intelligence commended her to the King.

Anthony Dent describes how this rich French province remained a royal English vineyard for a good three centuries.

R.B. Fountain introduces an influential French artist of wild animals and the chase.

Joanna Richardson takes readers on a mid twentieth century architectural tour of Paris; the French capital, she writes, bears the signature of successive rulers.

In 1764, writes Stuart Andrews, during his successful Grand Tour, James Boswell, then aged twenty-four, visited two great European thinkers, who were, he wrote, far more interesting to him ‘than most statues or pictures’.

Patrick Turnbull describes how, during the two months that preceded his abdication at Fontainebleau, Napoleon performed ‘prodigies of genius’.

J.P. Harthan describes The Salisbury Book of Hours; compiled in Rouen about 1425, the prayer-book owes its name to one of the best English commanders in France.