... 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.

Unlike some of his fellows in Westminster, Scottish statesman Henry Dundas made no attempt to make himself sound more ‘English’.

Horace Walpole, a loyal patron of Vauxhall pleasure gardens, visits newly-opened rival Ranelagh gardens in Chelsea.

David Hume encourages politicians to put away their distrust of other countries, and allow free trade to flourish.