Victorian

Daniel O'Connell, Irish Nationalist, Dies in Genoa

Richard Cavendish remembers the events of May 15th, 1847.

'Naming and Shaming' in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain

Andy Croll on how publishing anti-social behaviour is a trick we have copied from the Victorians.

Taxation 1688-1914

Patrick O'Brian evaluates the costs and benefits of Hanoverian and Victorian government.

'Skittles' and the Marquis - A Victorian Love Affair

A budding front-bench politician and his mistress ... not a tract for our times but an 1860s relationship recovered and reconstructed from love letters by the politician's biographer, Patrick Jackson.

Robert Peel - Statesman or Turncoat?

He marketed himself as a man of principle - a public image of which David Eastwood exposes the inaccuracy.

Blasphemy in Victorian Britain? Foote and the Freethinker

David Nash considers a cause celebre that tested tensions between pious tradition and a 'progressive' age.

Sleaze and the Victorian businessman

Cragside

Bernard Porter looks at the Victorian capitalist who made his fortune from dealing in weapons of war and constructed a Northumberland haven with the proceeds.

Dickens and the Construction of Christmas

The best-loved of Britain's novelists penned a tale that struck a potent chord in the popular revival of the season of goodwill. Geoffrey Rowell explains its appeal and its powerful religious and social overtones.