... I heard John Wesley sing. A visitor on the quayside on Sunday May 30th, 1742, would have stumbled into a crowd agape and a determined clergyman singing psalms.

In the opening lines of Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, the narrator explains the perverse whim that led him to leave his home shores behind.

In 1720, Welsh promoter William Howell opened a pleasure garden at Belsize House, but the pleasures drew the magistrates’ frowns.

Economist Adam Smith warned that when Western commercial interests get involved in policy-making abroad, war and want are sure to follow.

After an accident at a level crossing, the bosses of the Leicester and Swannington Railway acknowledged that drivers needed more than lung power.

For George Stephenson, the motto of the Stockton and Darlington Railway was a code to live by.