After two punishing years rising to the top of the East India Company’s armed forces in India, Robert Clive could not spare the time to go courting.

Sir Henry Craik had heard such glowing reports of Agra’s Taj Mahal, that he was afraid it might prove to be an anticlimax.

Cricketing legend W. G. Grace tells a story illustrating how fellow-batsman K. S. Ranjitsinhji set about winning the hearts of English cricketers.

In all his years of soldiering at home and abroad, Major-General George Younghusband had never heard British soldiers talk like those in Kipling’s tales.

After one of the worst outrages in modern British history, Winston Churchill stood up in the House of Commons to label the Amritsar Massacre an act of terrorism.

Following a historic embassy in 1792-93, Chien Lung, the Emperor of China, despatched a haughty letter rebuffing King George III’s offer of trade.