Sir Peter Lely: A Court Painter
He was born Pieter van der Faes on 14 September 1618 in Soest, Germany, but his parents were Dutch and he was raised in Haarlem where he …
Queen Henrietta Maria
Charles I married Princess Henrietta Maria of France by proxy on 1 May, 1625, just weeks after he ascended to the throne of England. He was …
Beau Brummell: Dandy
He was a fashion icon, the first of his kind, a man known for little more than the clothes he wore and the manner of his being – …
Highwaymen: ‘Stand and Deliver!’
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees. The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. The …
Tolpuddle Martyrs
The fate of the Tolpuddle Martyrs has long formed a central plank of socialist propaganda, a cause celebre around which all factions of the …
Omaha Beach
Tuesday, 6th June, 1944 would be D.Day, start of Operation Overlord the Allied invasion of Nazi Occupied Europe. It had originally been …
Pilgrim Fathers
By the time of her death on 24 March 1603, the glory days of Queen Elizabeth’s reign were well and truly over. The defeat of the Armada …
The Innocence of Pontius Pilate?
The story is told how many years ago a young Russian Jew was paid a rouble a month by the local Mayor to stand on the outskirts of his town …
William Jennings Bryan: The Great Commoner
A thick-set robust man of boundless energy with a loud voice and a big personality, William Jennings Bryan was difficult to ignore. His …
Constance Markiewicz: The English Countess of Irish Freedom
Born on 4 February 1868, Constance Georgine Gore-Booth was destined to be a lady, and as an English aristocrat raised in Ireland, …
Kaiser Wilhelm II
Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert, a Hohenzollern, and future Emperor of Germany was born on 27 January 1859 in Berlin at a time when the …
The Great Siege of Malta (1565)
On 29 May 1453, after seven weeks of siege warfare the city of Constantinople fell to the Muslim Ottoman forces of the Sultan Mehmed II, …