Political

Christopher Weaver describes how one of the creators of modern Soviet Russia met a hideous death in Mexico.

Bernard Pool introduces Secretary to James, Duke of York, 1660-7, and a Commissioner for the Navy.

A.W. Palmer describes how the troubled politics of Serbia played a large part in precipitating the first World War. By a policy of violence and assassination, a group of army conspirators, known as the “Black Hand,” laid a fuse to the Balkan powder-keg.

From her post as governess to a prosperous middle-class Russian family, writes Stephen Usherwood, a gifted young Englishwoman watched the gradual development of the Revolution.

On March 8th, 1894, Lord Rosebery took office as Prime Minister. John Raymond describes his fifteen difficult months in power.

Barrington’s admiration for the humanity, wit and decisiveness of his chief are affectionately apparent in this portrait of the great Whig Prime Minister at the height of his powers.

A further selection from a memoir Barrington composed towards the close of his life and transmitted to his kinsman, the third Earl of Durham. Through his connections with leading political families, and official appointments he held at 10 Downing Street and the Treasury, Barrington was in an excellent position from which to observe and comment on the personalities of the nineteenth century including Brougham, Melbourne, Peel and Gladstone.

Because of his vision of New Amsterdam as the most important city on the Atlantic seaboard, writes Arnold Whitridge, Stuyvesant stands out in American history as the most memorable of the colonial governors.

For some sixty years during the eighteenth century, writes Sarah Searight, Louisiana was a colony owing allegiance to the King of France.

Napoleon’s attempt to form a second and more liberal empire was, like Waterloo, a close-run thing and “came nearer to success than is usually allowed.”