The Napoleonic Wars in Europe in the early 19th Century saw the Spanish colonies in South America looking towards their own governance and the chance for independence. Joseph Bonaparte was on the throne of Spain, and the deposed Spanish King …
‘In order to be a good footballer, you must run swiftly and pass the ball accurately’. Wise words indeed – especially when one considers that they were uttered not by Jose Mourinho or Arsene Wenger, but by Kim Il Sung, …
The UK and the US shared common strategic interests in the region, but their analyses and policies were not identical and there were important differences in their tactical and diplomatic approaches’. (Chilcot Report on the Iraq enquiry, vol. I, p. …
George Hamilton-Gordon, fourth earl of Aberdeen, was Prime Minister of one of Britain’s rare coalition governments, despite never sitting in the House of Commons or holding a significant domestic post, but his reputation was damaged by his failure to prevent …
The death of Lord Kitchener, who drowned when HMS Hampshire sank just off the Orkney’s north-west coast on 5 June 1916, came as a profound shock to the nation. The Secretary of State for War was the public face of …
Disraeli said of Derby that ‘he abolished slavery, he educated Ireland, he reformed parliament’, but only the last of these was done when he was a Conservative Prime Minister. He is remembered mostly for the 1867 Reform Act, a milestone …
Winston Churchill in a speech in the House of Commons in October 1943 famously described the unique and ancient friendship between England and Portugal as an alliance “without parallel in world history”.[1] It is 630 years since a treaty of …
...the visit to the UK of Soviet leaders Bulganin and Khrushchev, respectively Premier and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was...
Benjamin Disraeli remains one of the most intriguing of British prime ministers. Born into a Jewish middle-class family, he became famous through his novels and self-publicity, and eventually achieved high political office after many failures. Opinions differ about his achievements, …
The independence of many South American countries from Spanish and Portuguese rule followed uprisings and wars from 1806 to the mid-1820s. British diplomacy in the independence of South America was, generally, about trade. Britain was an ally with Portugal and …