University students and high school seniors always come across these two words ‘Carolingian’ and ‘Caroline’ – the latter in reference to some remote islands – not to Queen…
Indo-China; some history
In the latter part of the nineteenth century the words Indo-China did not mean much to the average European. Map draughtsmen knew the word was applied (by the…
Wyclif & the Lollards
The name is also spelled Wycliffe: he was a religious reformer born around 1330. An intriguing thing is that for hundreds of years Wyclif was assumed to be…
The Battles of Little Bighorn & Wounded Knee
George Custer was a general in the US army who shouldn’t have been. He was brave but incapable of making a quick decision; he had high political ambitions,…
The Sun King
Louis the Fourteenth (XIV) was the King of France for seventy-two years, from 1643 to 1715. He is the great monarch who still startles lighter-minded history students by…
The Reichstag
This is, or rather was the Imperial Parliament of Germany. Here in Berlin the legislature of the German Second Empire and Weimar Republic was planned and expedited. It…
Another Voice: by Dean Swift
Yesterday March 25 regional elections took place in two autonomous communities in Spain – Andalucía and Asturias. The results were more or less what were expected, in that…
The fate of three great nautical ladies
Three enormous ocean liners, built well before the Second War when trans-Atlantic travel was best made by sea, not by air, suffered ends which none of them deserved….
French kings after the Revolution
Careless students of history may forget that the monarchy of France did not end with the execution of Louis XVI, last King of France before the Revolution (q.v.)….