1339
Lady Blakeney agrees to spy for the French Revolutionary government in return for her brother’s life.
In exchange for her brother Armand’s life, Marguerite, Lady Blakeney, is reluctantly playing the spy at a society ball. Citizen Chauvelin, of the French Revolutionary government’s secret police, wants her to find out what she can about the mysterious ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ who has been rescuing prisoners from the guillotine.
Posted June 9 2016
1340
British sympathy for Roman imperial progress evaporated when officials began asset-stripping the country.
In AD 60, corrupt Roman officialdom pushed the dowager queen of the Iceni, in what is now Norfolk, too far. But Britain’s military Governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, was far away in Anglesey (dealing, as he supposed, with the last British resistance) when he learnt of it.
Posted June 8 2016
1341
The Scottish missionary and medic believed that slavery could better be eradicated by trade than by force.
By the 1840s Britain had so repented of her involvement in slavery that she was the leading force in worldwide abolition. One of the most beloved anti-slavery campaigners was Scottish missionary, Dr David Livingstone.
Posted June 8 2016
1342
A young George Stephenson takes responsibility for the team spirit at Black Callerton mine.
In 1801, the job of brakesman at Black Callerton pit was given to a young George Stephenson. It was a very responsible job, as it involved lowering and raising miners in the deep and dangerous mineshaft, but Stephenson felt he had a wider duty to the whole mine.
Posted June 7 2016
1343
Howard gave his life to saving the ‘great gifts and strange inconsistencies’ of Britain’s unique democracy.
Leslie Howard Steiner (1893-1943) was born in London, to an English mother and a Jewish father who had emigrated from Hungary. Howard became the quintessential British matinee-idol, languid, slightly detached, but with a sense of something more beneath: a curious case of art imitating life.
Posted June 6 2016
1344
In a Christmas broadcast in 1940, actor Leslie Howard explained why British sovereignty was worth fighting for.
In a radio broadcast just before Christmas in 1940, British actor Leslie Howard spoke movingly of the remarkable and indeed unique character of his country, built on individual liberty and democratic government, and contrasted it with the ‘new European order’.
Posted June 6 2016