"It's damned hard lines asking for bread and only getting a bullet!" The dramatic and chaotic events surrounding the Russian Revolution have been studied and written about extensively for the last hundred years, by historians and journalists alike....

At the turn of the fifteenth century, private devotionals became a speciality of the renowned Ghent-Bruges illuminators. Wealthy patrons who commissioned work from these artists often spared no expense in the presentation of their personal prayer boo...

"No freeman is to be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed... except through the lawful judgment of his peers or through the law of the land". "To no one shall we sell, to no one shall we deny or delay right or justice" "Magna Carta" (or "Great Char...

Magna Carta is arguably the most famous document in world history. 2015 marks its 800th anniversary. Yet, until relatively recently, it was unknown how many versions of the document survive, the means by which they were distributed, or the relationsh...

The horror of the First World War brought out a characteristic response in a group of English artists, who resorted to black humour. Among these, John Hassall, a pioneering British illustrator and creator of the influential 'Skegness is so bracing' p...

Why did Asquith take Britain to war in 1914? What did educated young men believe their role should be? What was it like to fly over the Somme battlefield? How could a trench on the front line be "the safest place"? These compelling eye-witness accoun...

Fountain-Pens – The Super-Pen for Our Super-Men Ladies! Learn To Drive! Your Country Needs Women Drivers! Do you drink German water? When Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, companies wasted no time in seizing the commercial opportunities presen...

How did German intelligence agents in the First World War use dead fish to pass on vital information to their operatives? What did an advertisement for a dog in "The Times" have to do with the movement of British troops into Egypt? And why did Britis...

...No fewer than two hundred thousand Germans were already upon English soil! The outlook grew blacker every hour. Eight years before the outbreak of the First World War, when national hysteria over the supposed presence of German spies in England gr...

Shepherd Mead, bestselling author of "How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying", came to live in England with his family in 1958. Six years later he published a satirical handbook for fellow Americans to guide them through the nuances of Brit...