“We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order” announced Lenin to the Congress of Soviets early on the morning of November 8th, 1917. He had prepared no blueprint from which to work, and forty years later, writes Ernest Bock, the structure of the Soviet state is very different from that which its founder envisaged.
Christopher Sykes describes how the last Tsar of Russia, as well as Adolf Hitler and other anti-Semites, were among those taken in by this spurious publication.
At Oxford, in 1833, writes K. Theodore Hoppen, a group of earnest reformers set out to infuse new spiritual life into the Established Church.
“It is time that the abuse of his enemies should be appreciated in its true light, and not accepted as impartial history merely because they happened to be distinguished men.” By Theodore Zeldin.
Many German professional soldiers, writes F.L. Carsten, were staunch opponents of the Nazi regime.
In 1862 a Japanese official mission visited England, nine years after the re-opening of their country to the world. Carmen Blacker describes how their strange attire and ‘inscrutable reticence’ surprised the mid-Victorian public.
A.P. Ryan describes how, each Easter, the Irish Republic commemorates the anniversary of the April Rising in Dublin when a short-lived Provisional Government of the Republic was proclaimed.
In 1907, writes A.W. Palmer, two empires that had three times been on the verge of war in the preceding thirty years reached a hopeful accommodation.
“The son of a cotton millionaire scouring the auction rooms of Europe and building lavishly in the latest architectural style,” the Tory leader was a highly representative early nineteenth-century figure. By J. Mordaunt Crook.
A prosperous member of the commercial middle class, writes Roger Fulford, Whitbread made his name as the champion of radicalism and the persistent advocate of unpopular causes.
