Following the disastrous Seven Years’ War, France agreed to quit Canada and leave it to the British, which was not at all what the local tribesmen wanted.

Canada’s Hudson Bay has been a cause of war and an engine of prosperity, but long before that it was the scene of cold treachery.

Many of Australia’s first cities were planned by British bureaucrats who had never been there, which may explain why they put them in the wrong places.

Lord Cromer, a former Consul-General of Egypt, expressed his frustration at politicians who set too much store by Foreign Office briefings.

When it opened in 1901, the Uganda Railway still wasn’t in Uganda, and Westminster’s MPs were still debating whether or not to build it.

English explorer Major Edmund Lockyer tries to buy a puppy in Queensland, but ends up paying the owner to keep him.