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Tag: British history

  • The comedy of Swift Studies – 300 years since the death of John Harding

    Today, 19 April 2025, marks 300 years since the death of John Harding, Swift’s Dublin printer. Harding took the risk on Swift’s pseudonymous Drapier’s Letters. For the fourth of these Letters, he was imprisoned to await trial, where he would been interrogated as to the true identity of M. B. Drapier, but that court appearance…

  • My kingdom for a horse in Australia

    In his new book, The Brothers York: An English Tragedy, Thomas Penn patches over an important detail relating to Edward IV, who reigned from 1461 to 1483. Penn describes Edward as having been the legitimate son of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and his wife Lady Cecily Neville. However, Edward’s legitimacy was a point of…

  • The Death of George V – As Reported First in The Times

    When King George V died on 20 January 1936 the world was led to believe that he had died entirely of natural causes. Little did people know at the time that his death had been hastened by his physician in order to ensure that the news was reported first in The Times rather than the…

  • The Rogue Compositor at The Times in 1882

    This is the true story of a compositor working at The Times in 1882 who deliberately and maliciously inserted a ribald comment when setting the type for the newspaper. Who would have thought such a scandal could happen at such a newspaper? The Times of London, which began in 1785 and the archive of which…