Political

Coalition governments became common in 18th-century Britain, but tended to fail at times of crisis. Jeremy Black draws some parallels with the present day.

Before the First World War, Irish Unionists and Nationalists were poised to fight each other over the imposition of Home Rule by the British. Then, remarkably, they fought and died side by side, writes Richard S. Grayson.

Objects loaded with the history of the Troubles are scattered around Belfast, but sensitivity means the debate about how and where to exhibit them rumbles on, says James Morrison.

In 1959 Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba after a masterly campaign of guerrilla warfare. Drawing on this success, Castro and his followers, including Che Guevara, sought to spread their revolution, as Clive Foss explains.

Nancy Mitford finds that Carlyle’s biography of the King was one of the oddest ever written, but it is ‘so carefully drawn that it finally presents a perfect likeness’.

Diana Spearman explains the deep complexities of the pre-Victorian political landscape and electoral system in Britain. Ben Wilson offered his own historiographical perspective in this 2010 article.

The late Labour leader, who died in March aged 96, was the last great radical voice of Parliament and stands comparison with the celebrated 18th-century polemicist, writes Brian Brivati.

Ben Wilson visits the History Today archive to examine Diana Spearman’s analysis of the British constitution in the 18th century, an age characterised by liberty and individualism.