Sir William St Clair laid the first stones at Roslin in 1446, intending a grand collegiate chapel at the centre of a new educational institution. He died in 1484 with the work barely advanced, leaving ...

Wren was at Charles II’s door with a plan for a new London within a fortnight of the Great Fire of 1666, proposing wide streets and open plazas in place of the medieval tangle that had burned. The ...

On October 14, 1066, Harold II and William of Normandy met near Battle in East Sussex with roughly 7,000 men apiece and fought for 10 hours until a feigned Norman retreat broke the English line.

Prince Albert died in 1861 at the age of 42, and for the four decades that followed, his widow slept with his portrait propped on his pillow and the pouch holding his watch hanging above the bed. Both ...

Francis Drake carried the drum on the final voyage that killed him, a 1596 campaign in the West Indies that ended in dysentery rather than glory, and it now sits in the Treasures gallery at Buckland ...

Elizabeth I’s lord treasurer spent 32 years building Burghley on the edge of Stamford, and his descendants have been adding to it ever since, from Grinling Gibbons carvings to a Capability Brown lake ...

Most of Britain’s coastline has long since been found, photographed and queued for, which is what makes the far west of Wales such a reliable escape from the usual circuit. Six days will carry you ...

The Battle of Britain was still being fought overhead when Churchill told the House that never had so much been owed by so many to so few. The line fixed the fighter pilots in the national memory as ...

ONE OF ENGLAND’S MOST RENOWNED INDUSTRIES GREW IN THE TOWNS THAT BECAME STOKE-ON-TRENT. FEW TODAY WOULD THINK of pottery making as a revolutionary enterprise. Tables piled with ornate dishware usually ...

Once reserved exclusively for the monarch, today the King’s Road is the bustling High Street of Chelsea, lined with pubs and restaurants, booksellers and fashion boutiques.[/caption] Confident, urbane ...

On the banks of the River Aire near Bradford, Titus Salt built a working community around his textile mill, with a hospital, a library, a church, public baths and parks.[/caption] THERE IS A SAYING IN ...

At the general election of May 1, 1997, the “repackaged” New Labour Party under 43-year-old Tony Blair secured its biggest-ever victory. A total of 418 Labour MPs won seats in the House of Commons, ...