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Royal Restoration: Estates of the Duke of Monmouth

Charles II‘s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, became one of the most influential and powerful men at the Restoration court. He married a Scottish heiress, Anne Scott, and together they became leaders of fashion and taste.

Russian Piano Masterpieces: Stravinsky

Stravinsky’s solo piano output contains one of the absolute pinnacles of piano virtuosity, the Three Pieces from Petrushka.

Mata Hari: Femme Fatales

Mata Hari was an erotic dancer who, in 1917, was executed by the French army for treason. She has been portrayed as the ultimate femme fatale, extracting information from hapless men through exploiting her sensual charms.

England’s Tudor Reformation

The English Reformation – unlike many of the other Reformations convulsing sixteenth-century Europe – was at heart more about politics and law than about religion.

Christmas Lies and Legends

Is Santa really Dutch? Were Christmas Trees introduced by Prince Albert? Was Christmas once a time of faith, rather than riotous feasting?

England’s Unwanted Reformation

Most English people initially saw the Reformation as an unexpected catastrophe, wrenching their religious lives out of shape, and stripping their communities of resources they had naively believed belonged to them.

Russian Piano Masterpieces: Rachmaninov

Rachmaninov is considered by many to be the greatest composer-pianist in history. But his very popularity has left the complexity and subtlety of his music underappreciated.

Ruling Passions: The Architecture of the Cecils

Father and son, William and Robert Cecil, not only dominated politics for much of Elizabeth I and James I reign but dominated architectural fashion. Building a series of spectacular houses, they, and not the monarchy, were the great palace builders of their age.

Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites

Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) is one of the most recognisable and romanticised figures of British history. Born in Rome as a Catholic prince on 31 December 1720, he led the Jacobite Rising of 1745, which came closer than anyone expected to changing Great Britain irrevocably.

Russian Piano Masterpieces: Musorgsky

Musorgsky was a proficient, but not virtuosic pianist, and most of his piano music is comprised of unambitious salon pieces. On the basis of these modest exploits, no one could have predicted his Pictures at an Exhibition.

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