British history
The rewards of being the ‘asylum capital of the world’
Matthew Lockwood traces Britain’s long history as a haven for refugees and argues that the nation has benefitted greatly over the centuries as a result
Distrust and resentment have plagued Anglo-Russian relations for centuries
On a visit to England in 1556, Ivan the Terrible’s envoy alienated Londoners with his extreme suspicions – and lurid insults have been exchanged ever since
We must never lose the treasured Orkneys
Fertile fields and spectacular sea stacks are matched by an extraordinarily rich, dramatic history. No wonder the islands have been so celebrated for centuries
Set in a silver sea: the glory of Britain’s islands
Alice Albinia reminds us that Orkney was a trading station long before London, Iona the epicentre of Celtic Christianity and Shetland a haven for liberal Udal law
In praise of Birmingham, Britain’s maligned second city
During my gap year in 1981, I worked on the 24th floor of Birmingham’s Alpha Tower for the Regional Manpower…
Why was Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s beautiful wife, so reviled?
On 15 June 1645, as Thomas Fairfax’s soldiers picked over the scattered debris on the Naseby battlefield, they made a…
It’s thrilling to learn that the rebellious Urien actually existed
Once, when we shared the same history teacher in our teens, my older brother Dominic handed in an essay about…
The Victorian origins of ‘medieval’ folklore
I would guess that contemporary pagans have a love-hate relationship with Ronald Hutton. With books such as The Triumph of…
Brother against brother in the English civil war
‘The Wars of the Three Kingdoms’ is the best description of the devastating conflict that erupted in England, Ireland and…
How Charles II sought to obliterate a decade of British history
When the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, in the person of that ‘lovely black boy’ Charles II, was announced in…
With Elizabeth Stuart as monarch, might the English civil war have been avoided?
Many girls dream about their favourite princesses. Elizabeth Stuart, a princess herself, took this fantasy a step further and modelled…
How fears of popery led to a century of turmoil in ‘the land of fallen angels’
Stuart England did not do its anti-Catholicism by halves. In the late 1670s and early 1680s, a popular feature of…
Has George III been seriously maligned?
Americans regard George III as a power-crazed petty tyrant – but he was the very opposite, says Kate Maltby
The delicate business of monitoring the monarchy
This very readable account of relations between the British intelligence services and the Crown does more than it says on…
What does it really mean to feel English?
Referring to the precarious future of the Union of England and Scotland, the authors of Englishness: The Political Force Transforming…
Not all British memsahibs were racist snobs
Despite efforts to prevent them, British women formed a part of the Indian empire almost from the start. Although the…
The stubborn old Hanoverians saw new Gunpowder Plots everywhere
Once won, rights and freedoms are taken for granted. We all find it difficult to imagine life before the Married…
Bryant’s tyrants: Chris Bryant bashes the British aristocracy
I rashly discarded this book’s dustjacket when I received it, and thus saw only the unlettered cover, a faded photograph…
When posters told us our place
As a sign of the way things have changed, nothing could better this. Hester Vaizey, Cambridge history don and ‘publishing…
Anne Boleyn’s last secret
Why was the queen executed with a sword, rather than an axe?
