122. Events, dear boy, events
After discussing his relative success with a moderately liberal programme in England last time, in this episode we talk about Palmerston’s far greater difficulties abroad. There was another Opium War ...
25 Dec 202214min
121. After Crimea
After the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the troops came home from Crimea, as did the remarkable women we talked about last week: Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale. They came back to different li...
17 Dec 202214min
120. Two remarkable women
Mary Seacole, Jamaican and Mixed Race, and Florence Nightingale, White and from the English middle class, both in different ways did extraordinary work in Crimea as nurses. They both opened the doors ...
11 Dec 202214min
119. Ending a war, replacing a government
Conditions in Crimea were appallingly bad, and all sides lost more men to disease than in combat. Britain did particularly badly in the first year, when the French performed rather better. However, in...
4 Dec 202214min
118. Someone had blundered
Extraordinary! For once, instead of being at war with each other, Britain and France are going to war together against someone else. In this instance, Russia. And eventually in Crimea. Where the war i...
27 Nov 202214min
117. Russian Bear
Just as, after the Second World War, the Western European powers were grateful to Russia for using its colossal military force to ensure the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, while still being frightened of...
20 Nov 202214min
116. Two governments, two rivals
The tale of the first government led by the Earl of Derby (whom we first met as Lord Stanley), in which Benjamin Disraeli served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, from its start to its fall such a short...
13 Nov 202214min
115. Who? Who? and a Great Show
It was time for Disraeli to break through. Not yet to the top job: that, as Melbourne had predicted years before, would go to Stanley, now known as Derby. But Disraeli would land a big job in governme...
6 Nov 202214min
