In 1846, Daniel O’Connell stood up in the House of Commons to draw attention to the Great Hunger in Ireland, and to plead for a swift response.

With Christian Europe tearing itself apart over the Protestant Reformation, the Ottoman Turks saw an opportunity for Europe-wide domination.

The Foreign Office had a long tradition of regarding a strong Russian Empire as ‘not in the British interest,’ but John Bright saw only mutual benefit in it.

In 1877, John Bright told a meeting of the Manchester India Association that he had wanted to put India on the path to independence nearly twenty years before.

Richard Cobden realised that John Bright, overcome with grief after seeing his young wife die, needed something worthwhile to live for.

Two years into the American Civil War, the Union army responded to a dispiriting defeat at Chancellorsville with a decisive and historic victory at Gettysburg.