British History

Scotland’s independent colonial adventures were devastating failures that ultimately led to the country becoming the junior partner in the United Kingdom. Why were Scots so drawn to central America, and why were their schemes so unsuccessful? There was something about the steamy isthmus of central America that attracted Scottish adventurers. With its tropical jungles, exotic plants and animals, searing temperatures and debilitating diseases, it was as […]

A wonderful paradise on the Isthmus of Panama

If you were fabulously wealthy and fashionable in the 16th and 17th centuries you might demonstrate your power and influence by building a grand house. Hundreds were built across England, serving the landed aspirations of a burgeoning nobility. But a handful had a design concept that was quite unique – these are the ‘calendar houses’, built according to numerological principles to represent the days, weeks or […]

Calendar houses

If you travel to south Wales by train roughly ten miles north of Bristol you will plunge into darkness and enter the Severn Tunnel. Seven kilometres later, you will emerge into the light and over the border into Wales. The tunnel was built by the Great Western Railway between 1873 and 1886 and was, for many years, the UK’s longest mainline railway tunnel. I had never […]

British Railways at war

Heraldry in England developed in all its elaborate glory in the middle ages. One of the most striking features was the emergence of supporters as part of a full coat of arms. Animals, both real and imaginary, humans, angels and objects could all be used to stand either side of the main shield. In England, the development of the monarchy can be traced by observing the […]

Rule all England under a Hog

The British £2 is one of the most striking coins in circulation. As well as being the only mainstream bimetallic coin in the UK, it is wider and heavier than any other. With its golden edge and silver centre, it has become the coin of choice to commemorate events, people and institutions of national significance. The current series of the £2 coin was launched on 15 […]

A two pound piece

Argentine animosity towards the United Kingdom is neither a recent trend nor solely attributable to competing claims for islands in the South Atlantic. The roots of Anglo-Argentine friction go back to the mid-nineteenth century. Argentina was then at the heart of Britain’s informal economic empire, a shadowy counterpart to the more overt imperial power seen in places such as India and throughout Africa. Opponents labelled it […]

The English Octopus and Argentina

The newspaper headlines leave little doubt that fiscal cuts will hit the armed forces especially hard. The Evening Standard led with “Britain’s army will be slashed to smallest size since Napoleonic wars”, raising the prospect of the UK’s land forces being reduced to their lowest numbers for over 200 years. But how has the size of the British Army changed in the past centuries? And how […]

The British Army’s swells and shrinkages

Amongst Britain’s diverse population are adherents of all of the world’s major faiths. Religious devotion often requires a place of worship: churches, mosques, temples, synagogues and gurdwaras. A reference to the first purpose built mosque in the UK made me wonder when each of these religious buildings were first erected in Britain. Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys is now into its fourth series on BBC […]

First places of devotion

A dowry is the money, goods, or estates that a wife brings to her husband at their marriage. The giving of dowries was a common practice in societies around the world and still continues in some countries and amongst certain classes. The ‘golden’ age of dowries was reached in European societies in the 15th to 18th centuries, when royal dowries amounted to colossal fortunes or exchanges […]

Right royal dowries

If you are reading this in the UK, have a look at the change in your pocket. One side features a portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II and the other continues the monarchical theme by displaying one of an array of heraldic badges, devices and national icons. Changing over the years, the choice of these designs tells us something of the importance of giving equal weight […]

Coining the home nations

During the darkest days of the First World War, the British Government feared a domestic enemy almost as much as the hated Hun. As men were slaughtered in the churning quagmires of the trenches, the demon drink stalked in the homes and factories of the home front. The restrictions and prohibitions that were put in place had a profound effect on domestic life which continues to […]

Fighting spirits (and beer, cider and wine)

It is a Welsh nationalist’s fantasy – an independent country boasting two ancient universities to rival Oxford and Cambridge, a free church and a Parliament dating back to the fourteenth century. The Welsh language is the universal mother tongue and the nation stands as an equal to its larger neighbour, England. These were the plans of Owain Glyndŵr, the last native Welshman to hold the title […]

The Wales that never was

The Greyhound Racing Association faced a grave problem in the late 1930s. The British seemed to have fallen out of love with dog racing, leaving stadia half full and the former cash cow looking as thin and exhausted as, well, a greyhound. Promoters came up with a breathtaking array of ideas to revitalise interest but none were as startling as the plan devised by Archer Leggett. […]

The great Romford and Harringay cheetah races!

York, Swindon, Crewe, Derby, Peterborough, Wolverton and Eastleigh are very different places, cities and towns spread across Britain. From ancient cathedral cities to metropolises that barely existed two centuries ago, they all share one thing; they are amongst Britain’s railway towns. Railway towns owed their economic success and booming populations to the arrival and patronage of the railways. To be a true railway town, it wasn’t enough […]

Makin’ all t’railways cum to York

In the build up to long planned invasion of Nazi occupied Europe, Operation Overlord, nervous tension dominated the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) headquarters. When a series of crossword clues appeared in the Daily Telegraph with answers that were closely guarded operational codewords, the spooks were spooked. Had the whole plan been blown by a puzzle? The clue seemed innocuous: Red Indian on the Missouri. […]

Solving the puzzle

The railways were the defining invention of the industrial revolutions, transforming the countries in which they were established. They found plenty of peaceful uses as conduits for commerce, passenger transportation and the emergence of travel, but were also used as weapons of war. In fact, they would be used by the British Army almost as soon as the first UK railways were open to the public. […]

Training the troops

How did Britain’s elite live in the capital once their great London houses had become either uneconomic to run or had been sold off to pay off debts and estate taxes? They would find comfort and a home away from home in a cluster of distinctly upper crust hotels that catered to their every whim. Put yourselves, just for a whimsical moment, into the shoes of […]

Living in London luxury

The last ditch defence for London from invasion by Napoleon was, appropriately, if optimistically enough, a ditch. The Royal Military Canal, to give this rather grand ditch its rather grand title, runs for 28 miles from Seabrook (near Folkestone) to Cliff End (near Hastings). It was never tested against France’s Grande Armée, but did have some uses in taming the wild, smuggler’s paradise of the Romney […]