Often referred to as the ‘Hungry Decade’, the 1840s was characterised by social unrest, military losses and economic hardship ...

General Charles Cornwallis is best known for his part in the British defeat at Yorktown during the American Revolutionary War ...

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890 in Torquay, Devon, the youngest of Clara and Frederick Miller’s three children. Although she was also a successful playwright responsible for ...

“There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as a good tavern or inn.” So wrote Samuel Johnson and for many, this remains true today. Think of an ...

In 1900, there were over 11,000 hansom cabs on the streets of London alone. There were also several thousand horse-drawn buses, each needing 12 horses per day, making a staggering total of over 50,000 ...

In 1381, some 35 years after the Black Death had swept through Europe decimating over one third of the population, there was a shortage of people left to work the land. Recognising the power of ...

This is the call or cry of the town crier, now usually only heard at ceremonials, fetes and local events. It would however have been a common cry on the streets of medieval England. ‘Oyez’ (pronounced ...

The “Bloody Code”, a grisly name to denote a dark history, was given to the series of laws which were enacted over several years from the seventeenth century onwards which mandated the death penalty ...

Northumbria was one of the great seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England, alongside East Anglia (East Angles), Essex (East Saxons), Kent, Mercia, Sussex (South Saxons) and Wessex (West Saxons).

The Grand Tour was the utlimate Georgian / Victorian gap year experience. Expensive and glamourous, this was a rite of passage for rich aristocratic young men (and later, women) who travelled Europe, ...

British political life in the latter half of the nineteenth century was dominated by two very diverse characters: William Ewart Gladstone (1809 – 1898) and Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881). During ...

The reign of King George V in the early twentieth century witnessed some of the most dramatic changes not only in British history but across the globe. George V, the son of Edward VII, had not ...