19th Century… How Victorians Fell in Love with American Rebels 17 Apr 202017 Apr 2020 By Stephen Basdeo The much vaunted ‘special relationship’ between the USA and the UK is a fairly recent invention. For much of the Victorian period, relations between the two nations…
20th Century… George Orwell’s Time as a Policeman in British India 7 Feb 2020 By Angelo Calfo George Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’, first published in New Writing in 1936, is a recollection in first person of an experience that George Orwell had while serving…
19th Century… Anon. ‘Robin Hood’ (1828) 7 Jul 2019 The following poem, written anonymously and titled simply as 'Robin Hood', appeared in The Oriental Observer and Literary Chronicle in 1828. The newspaper, printed in Calcutta during the rule of…
19th Century… Jack Harkaway: The Victorian Harry Potter 26 Jun 2019 By Stephen Basdeo The Victorians in many ways were just like us: they enjoyed a good scandal whenever it was reported in the press, they liked both trashy and high-brow…
18th century… The Crime of Sati 17 Apr 201919 Nov 2019 By Stephen Basdeo In the first Robin Hood novel, Robert Southey's 'Harold; or, The Castle of Morford' (1791), we are told of a Norwegian woman's travels through the Orient; entranced…
18th century… Bandits and Robbers of India 9 Feb 20199 Feb 2019 By Stephen Basdeo During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British East India Company established a number of fortified trading settlements—“factories”—in various parts of the Indian subcontinent. The trading company…
