Napoleon’s rise and fall

Over a long career, John Hardman has specialised to great effect in teasing out, from speeches, decrees, minutes, memoranda, letters, diaries and unsent drafts, the varied moods of French political de

The morning air was charged with anticipation as the people of New Orleans gathered before the Cabildo, the grand seat of government on the Plaza de Armas (now Jackson Square). Almost three weeks earl

The summer of 1791 was an exceptionally busy period, even by Mozart’s habitually hardworking standards. He was, to begin with, composing a new opera, Die Zauberflöte (‘The Magic Flute’). Then, in June

When General Francisco Franco died on 20 November 1975 – 39 years after the start of the brutal civil war that brought him to power – the prospect of a bloodless transition to democracy in Spain appea

Capturing the immediacy of fighting and the writhing bodies of soldiers, as well as keeping narrative clarity, proved enormously difficult for painters depicting battles before the advent of photography. Michael Hall reveals how they rose to the challenge

THE TURNING POINTS OF 1812