Georgian

Britain’s self-styled ‘Thief-Taker General’ was not all he seemed. On 24 May 1725 Jonathan Wild was finally brought to justice.

For 18th-century smugglers in Guernsey and the Isle of Man, plague was a business opportunity.

On the 250th anniversary of her birth, Jane Austen still has lessons for readers of history.

Over the 18th and 19th centuries Britain’s economy, technology, and society were transformed by the so-called Industrial Revolution. Why?

Surgeons trying to eliminate pain eventually arrived at anaesthesia – but not before a contest with older, more unusual therapies. Why was mesmerism so magnetic?

Political reputations are forged by actions, but the long view of history can be hard to predict.

Two rare textile discoveries connect 18th-century Barbadian schoolgirls to England.

British soldiers fighting in the American Revolutionary War were unprepared for the terrain awaiting them across the Atlantic. Many thought that America was determined to destroy them; some felt it had succeeded.

Chevaliere d’Eon or Chevalier d’Eon? An 18th-century legal dispute between two French spies unravelled into a public battle about identity.

British agents of empire saw their actions in India through the texts of their classical educations. They looked for Alexander, cast themselves as Aeneas and hoped to emulate Augustus.