Social

Since its foundation, writes Ian Bradley, the Old Vic theatre became in turn a drinking den, a temperance hall, and the home of serious ballet and drama.

Windmills abounded in England from the twelfth century onwards. Terence Paul Smith describes how their bodies usually revolved on a vertical post so that the miller could face the sails into the wind.

Over four centuries the University of Padua attracted a large number of foreign students, writes Alan Haynes, among whom the English were prominent.

Samuel Stanley describes how a tribe resembling the Aztecs of Mexico flourished on the banks of the lower Mississippi until they encountered the French.

In 1879, writes Samuel Stanley, a magnificent new clubhouse was opened for the benefit of the gentlemanly young ranchers who had recently invaded Wyoming.

Impressions of the social and literary scene in the French capital, as recorded by nineteenth-century visitors.

L.W. Cowie describes what was, for seventy years, a key feature of the fashionable resort on the English south coast.

An elaborate hierarchy maintained the royal household of Elizabeth I, writes Alan Haynes, but there was much pilfering and graft among the purveyors of domestic goods.

George Woodcock describes the emergence of a heretical Orthodox sect in eighteenth-century Russia, and their eventual emigration to Canada.

During the War of 1812, writes Harvey Strum, profit proved more persuasive than patriotism to many New Yorkers and Vermonters, who continued to supply the British forces in Canada.