The diplomat’s task is to see the best in other peoples, not to scold them for their failings.

The night before the Comte de Lavalette was to be executed, his wife Émilie came to visit him with a proposal that left him speechless.

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.

When Saint-Mars arrived to take over as warden of the Bastille in 1698, staff at Paris’s most famous prison had eyes only for his prisoner.

Richard the Lionheart told Philip, the martial Bishop of Dreux, to decide whether he was a bishop or a knight.

When Richard I heard that the town of Verneuil in Normandy was under threat, he made a vow that few could be expected to take so literally.