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.

The villagers of Mabutso in Southern Africa begged Dr David Livingstone to rid them of a menacing pride of lions.

Four years before the bloody American civil war, Dr David Livingstone proposed a peaceful way to rid the world of slavery.

The Scottish missionary and medic believed that slavery could better be eradicated by trade than by force.

It lasted barely forty minutes, but it brought slavery to an end in the little island territory.