Nearly seventy years after his death, the roguish laird still cast a spell over the farm-folk of the Highlands.

Henry Tilney teases a bewildered Catherine Morland for her lazy vocabulary.

Sir Humphry Davy pleads with Britain’s scientists not to be bought by Napoleon’s gold.

The invention of the steamboat was a formidable challenge not just of engineering, but of politics and finance.

The future hero of Waterloo dealt with political ambush as comfortably as he dealt with the military kind.

His alpaca-wool mills near Bradford proved the social benefits of private enterprise in the right hands.