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...War. And the bars on the medal? Well these relate to specific battles in Laings Nek and Belfast in South Africa. So he was a rifleman in the Boer War and he served with distinction during two campaigns. It was easy to find that out once we knew the regiment, and you can get that information even from a photograph, as long as it’s got a uniform or even a cap badge. Audio...

...class readers were particular fans of Dickens. East-Ender George Acorn was punished by his parents for wasting 3½d on a second-hand copy of David Copperfield, but later changed their minds by reading the saddest passages aloud to them (UK RED: 2368). Arthur Harding, a Victorian professional criminal, enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities and Dombey and Son when he read them in...

...class women’s movements were very much restricted by the rules of purdah, that is, the seclusion of women from public view behind high-walled screens and curtains within the home. It is all the more remarkable then, that during the reign of the fourth Mughal Emperor Jahangir, real power was known to be exerted by his favourite wife, Nur Jahan. Born to a Persian family,...

...classes at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he received further instruction in an academic, classical style of painting, making studies from plaster casts of antique sculpture. And throughout his life Delacroix visited and copied paintings in the Louvre by artists such as Rubens, Raphael, Correggio, Titian, Veronese and Rembrandt. These were all masters from whom student...