Further thoughts on John of Gaunt & his son Henry Bolingbroke
The old Palace of the Savoy / freegaes.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com In early February, 1399, John of Gaunt died in Leicester. He was fifty-eight years old – not a bad age-scale for the fourteenth century. His [...]
Further thoughts on Edward I of England
Artist’s impression of King Edward / genial.net On the afternoon of 7th July, 1307, the Plantagenet king of England Edward I died on his way north with a huge army. His intention had [...]
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 [...]
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