Cultural

The temples of Paestum have long been admired. Only recently, writes Neil Ritchie, have archaeologists unearthed a wealth of associated works of art.

Francis Watson describes the long and adventurous history of the Koh-i-Noor; between the fourteenth century, when its existence first became known, and 1839, when, at Queen Victoria’s request, it joined the British Crown Jewels.

Courtney Dainton describes how the enquiring middle class trained at the grammar schools of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries went on to influence late medieval English society.

Father Ricci spent many years on his mission near Canton. Nora C. Buckley describes how, eventually, this Jesuit's skills in mathematics and astronomy were welcomed in Peking.

Aram Bakshian Jr. profiles a true Venetian, Lorenzo Da Ponte, who, like his associate Casanova, had an extravagant and boldly adventurous career.

Odo Russell, writes Alec Randall, was Britain’s unofficial diplomatic agent at the Vatican during the years when Italy was unified and when the controversy took place over the Papal Syllabus.

On June 9th, 1774, a fête champêtre, magnificent even by eighteenth-century standards, attracted an appreciative concourse of the English nobility and gentry. Olive Fitzsimmons describes the event.

Frances Austin reads the lively late eighteenth century letters of a great surgeon’s apprentice to his family in Cornwall.

J.L. Kirby describes the reign of a sovereign with a ‘genius for popular kingship’; Henry V was probably the first English ruler to address his subjects in their native language.

Not until the second decade of the twentieth century, writes Alun C. Davies, was a standardised method of time-keeping established throughout Britain.