The tall army recruits known as the Potsdam Giants, F.L. Carsten writes, played a considerable part in the British diplomacy during the early 18th century, and the efforts of the Prussian recruiting sergeants to procure men of the desired size extended to the British Isles.
Thomas Balston profiles John Boydell, Lord Mayor of London in 1790, who created the first great printselling business in Britain, and could count Reynolds, Romney, Fuseli, Benjamin West, and Wright of Derby among the artists who worked for him.
An acceptable minister in peace-time, Lord North’s misfortune was to hold office at the time of the American Revolution and War, as Eric Robson here shows.
Roger Fulford introduces the life and career of 'perhaps the dimmest' British Prime Minister.
T.H. McGuffe describes the invasion, and subsequent hurried retreat, of England during the Jacobite Rebellion.
T.H. McGuffe analyses the failure of Admiral Byng to relieve the besieged British forces against French onslaught.
Alan Yorke-Long documents the beginnings of Georgian England's affair with the music of the Hanoverian composer.
A man of deep convictions, George III ruled at a time “when kings were still expected to govern. That he failed to acquire “true notions of common things”, Lewis Namier writes, was “perhaps the deepest cause of his tragedy.”
The seat of monarchs almost since English monarchy began, Windsor Castle owes its familiar outlines to the architect commissioned by King George IV.
Peter Quennell says Hogarth’s great survey of the Humours of an Election is one of the masterpieces of English 18th century painting
