An infamous trio, Darnley, Bothwell & Rizzio
These three sixteenth century men had a lot in common, though the first had royal blood, the second noble blood, and the third was a foreign commoner. What they had in common was Mary Queen [...]
Further thoughts on John I
Angry John signs while elderly Marshal supervises / britishromanticism.wikispaces King John has the worst reputation of any English king, and there is plenty of competition. He was a crooked legislator, greedy, consumed with [...]
The father of Winston
Lord Randolph Churchill /lifedaily.com Few people have any other mind’s eye image of Winston Churchill than that of a very old man, with a big cigar and perhaps an even bigger ego. [...]
Regicides, family murders & mysteries
The regicide of King Charles I / lookandlearn.com Regicide, or the killing of a reigning monarch by his own people has always been believed (though not by republicans) to be among the worst [...]
More thoughts on that Yalta Conference
The ‘Big Three’ from l. to r. ‘Exhausted’, ‘Dying’, and ‘Exuberant’ / spartacus.educational.com In February, 1945, the second ‘Big Three’ conference took place at Yalta in the Crimea. The first had been in [...]
What was the ‘White Australia Policy’?
William Hughes with some fellow White Australians / smh.com.au Towards the end of the Victorian era, when neither statesmen or dustmen had yet heard of political correctitude, Australia began the unenviable task of [...]
The Dominions, and the Statute of Westminster
A part of New Zealand / airnewzealand.ar.com Readers become confused by the essential differences between dominions and colonies and protectorates. The British Empire, when it existed, embraced all three. ‘Dominions’ was the name [...]
The real Sir William Wallace
Statue of William Wallace in Aberdeen, Scotland / en.wikipedia.org Some years ago the anglophobe film star and director Gibson made a Hollywood-backed movie called Braveheart. This tasteful work of art purports to be [...]
The American Federation of Labor
Samuel Gompers / britannica.com ‘Socialism’ or ‘Socialist’ are unclean words in the United States. This is why the other part of their two-party political system is called ‘The Democratic Party’ as opposed to [...]
Action Française (1899)
Charles Maurras / lactionfrancaise. net In one of our recent posts we described the case of Alfred Dreyfus, and discussed how much the prevalent anti-Semitism at the end of the 19th century influenced [...]
Mensheviks
Julius Martov, a leader of the Mensheviks / en.wikipedia.org The word means ‘members of the minority’; Mensheviks were another revolutionary party in Russia, similar in their aims, but not as radical as the [...]
What was ‘The March on Rome’?
Mussolini thinking / people.opposingviews.com (a) The end of Rome as an empire. (b) An asssault by angry unelected popes. (c) An attempt to seize power by the fascists of Mussolini. Those of our [...]
The travails of Manuel Godoy
Godoy seen by a French artist in 1790 / es.wikipedia.org This astute man was born in 1767, in Extremadura, a well-named rocky wilderness bordering Portugal, with the vastness of Andalucía to the south. [...]
Stalin’s Five Year Plans
/ historiasyvidas.com By the year 1928 Josep Stalin was firmly in the saddle in the Sovietized Russia. The dictator was determined to add Russia to the list of world powers – the USA, [...]
The case of Alfred Dreyfus
Dreyfus / biografíasyvidas.com Dreyfus was born into a Jewish family in France in 1859. The fact of his Jewishness was to prove a main factor in his future. He chose the army as [...]
What was Laissez-faire?
/ words on images.com Some writers have incorrectly translated this French phrase as Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, and attributed it (among others) to Prime Minister Walpole. But this doctrine means much more: it [...]
The Austro-Prussian War (1866)
Otto von Bismarck / en.wikipedia.org Though it has been put into the shadow by the Franco-Prussian War, this was one of the most important conflicts in the 19th century, because it overturned the [...]
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