Modern History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Modern History’
When Lord Salisbury asked the Russian Minister of the Interior how many agents the Tsar had in India, the reply came as a shock.
Throughout the nineteenth century, London was afraid that the Russian Empire would invade India through Afghanistan. Russian reassurances fell on deaf ears, leading to war in Afghanistan in 1838-42 and again in 1878-80. Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India, issued a press crackdown, and Russophobia in the home press spiked.
William Stead warned his fellow-journalists to take care that their bellicose rhetoric did not end in a real war with Russia.
After witnessing a Russian village burn to the ground because a boy played with matches in a barn, journalist William Stead (1849-1912) was moved to be severe on those other ‘boys with matches’ — the hawkish British press, whose incendiary words could spark the powder kegs of European politics.
William Stead conceived modern print journalism in the belief that newspapers could change the world.
Driven by a sense of moral crusade, William Stead (1849-1912) transformed newspaper journalism from simple reporting into political activism, pioneering now familiar techniques from headlines, illustrations, interviews and editorial comment to the plain speech and lurid storylines of the tabloids.
A man unjustly condemned to transportation finds that thieves thieve, but sometimes decency shines through too.
In a July 1852 issue of Charles Dickens’s ‘Household Words’, readers heard the true story of an innocent man sentenced to transportation. Even though the guilty party had now confessed, the life sentence stood, and on day two of his four-month voyage to Australia the nightmare had already taken a turn for the worse.
Under a moonlit sky in October 1942, Allied and Axis forces met in battle on the sands of the Egyptian desert.
The Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942 was a turning point in the Second World War. A German and Italian army was overwhelmed by British, Indian and Commonwealth forces, supported by the US from the air. Also fighting for the Allies was a British-trained brigade of Free Greeks, and (so it was said) an ancient Roman cavalryman.
Prussia’s invasion of Silesia in 1740 plunged Europe into turmoil, and a French invasion of England became a very real threat.
The War of the Austrian Succession began as part of the seemingly endless German quest to gobble up the continent’s smaller states. It would not have involved Britain had King George II not been also Elector of Hanover, and if France had not seen it as an opportunity to expand her empire at Britain’s expense.