The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
A Very Dickensian Christmas Christmas as we know it was largely defined by the Victorians: from the arrival of Christmas trees to the development of crackers and the sending of cards, most of our modern-day traditions date back to the mid-19th century. The royal...
TIPSY CAKE Based on Eliza Acton, 1845, Modern Cookery As a confirmed trifle-hater, I briefly considered putting a nice, savoury trifle in here, based on lobster in a fried bread cup. But honesty compels me to admit it is more of a croustade, and a cheat’s way out. If...
The British Way of War is about the interconnected lives of a man and an idea, lives that reached a climax in the catastrophe of the First World War Western Front. Great ideas do not emerge in a vacuum, they are shaped by individuals, and reflect the time in which...
The Dublin Railway Murder On the morning of Friday 14 November 1856 the chief cashier of the Broadstone railway terminus, George Little, failed to report for work. It was out of character for such a conscientious employee to disappear without warning, and his worried...
It seems fitting given recent events, to examine the history of jihad in Northeast Africa through the lens of western interventionism. As Warren Dockter, author of Churchill and the Islamic World, puts it: Empire and Jihad is a ‘sobering bridge’ between British...
Neil Faulkner, your book opens in 1851 with the explorer and missionary, David Livingstone, who encounters what turns out to be a huge slave trade that stretches from Africa to India. Whilst Britain had abolished slavery in 1833, what were the numbers that were...
The West African slave trade has become a staple of history teaching and popularisation. Rightly so. The triangular trade – trinkets from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Americas, plantation commodities from the Americas to Europe – was the most visceral...
What do you do if you’re an uneducated 20-year-old Victorian woman, married to an unimpressive man, with two children but still living with your Mum, the threat of the workhouse ever looming? This was the life of Emily Soldene when she read a glowing review of the...
The Homicidal Earl: The Life of Lord Cardigan Of all the cock-ups that provide shade from the bright light of Britain’s military successes, the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava, fought in the Crimea on 25th October 1854, is one of the most...
The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was more than just a mutiny, although that was how it began. Of the 148 major units (battalions of infantry or regiments of cavalry) of the Bengal Army ninety-three mutinied or were disbanded as likely to mutiny. The Bombay and Madras armies...
