Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
© Nigel Brown, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
Loyal subjects of King James II continued to fight his corner after he, and any real hope of success, had gone.
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© Jorge Royan, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
No one is more dangerous than the man who thinks that it is his destiny to direct things for the common good.
© Leonard Bentley, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Queen Victoria assured her subjects that there were no second-class citizens in her eyes.
From Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.
Abdul Karim’s rapid rise in Victoria’s household made him enemies.
Photo by Hayman Selig Mendelssohn, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
The grand-daughter of Queen Victoria was as close to the poor of Moscow’s slums as she was to the Russian Tsar.
King Philip V of Spain sent a second Spanish Armada against Britain, but it suffered much the same fate as the first.