Political

The English journalist Walter Bagehot was one of the few commentators to grapple with the constitutional issues behind the the American Civil War. Frank Prochaska discusses his ideas.

At the beginning of the ninth century, Charlemagne—already the master of Western Europe—was crowned by a calculating Pope as the supreme sovereign of the Christian world. Peter Munz asks what the real significance of his new title really was?

Richard Cavendish remembers the Union of South Africa's first election campaign in September 1910.

Nigel Jones celebrates a great humanitarian who navigated the perilous paths between good and evil, a mission that was to cost him his life.

The fortunes of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II and the regard in which their successive regimes came to be held were mirrored in the fate of one of their mightiest naval vessels, as Patrick Little explains.

At a time of widespread concern about the patriotism of 'economic migrants' and political refugees, Peter Barber tells the story of one 19th-century immigrant whose affection for Britain grew as political crisis severed his attachment to home.

Martin Greig reveals the intimate relationship between the powerful Earl of Lauderdale, Charles II's Secretary for Scotland in the 1660s, and a Scottish spinster who became the earl's 'Presbyterian conscience' during a tumultuous period for kirk and crown.

Almost everything written about and by Kim Philby is wrong, claims Boris Volodarsky. The Soviet spy and his KGB masters sought to exaggerate his successes against the West, beginning with the fictions that surround Philby’s first mission during the Spanish Civil War.

Richard Cavendish remembers the death of an ill-fated medieval Scottish king, on August 3rd 1460.

During the Anglo-French conflicts that characterised the 14th century, the Oxford theologian John Wyclif challenged the  ‘un-Christian’ pursuit of war and wealth. Yet, just like anti-war protesters today, Wyclif had little influence on Parliament or the king, writes Rory Cox.