The History of Britain Magazine

Metropolitan London has around 7,000 public houses – an average of 25 pubs per square mile! Some of these iconic watering holes are associated with important events in history…

“No taxation without representation”. The anger of the American colonists against the 1773 Tea Act passed by the British Parliament led to the event known as the Boston Tea Party. This act of colonial defiance against British rule was a critical moment in the history of the American Revolution.

From the original political parties the Tories and the Whigs, evolved two of the three main protaganists of the modern era, the Conservatives and the Liberals. But what happened to the Whigs you may ask…and who were they?

Chief Warrant Officer James A. Pool, 29th Naval Construction Battalion (known as CBs or “Seabees”), US Navy, was stationed in Britain in the run-up to D-Day. Throughout this time, he wrote regular letters to his wife, in which he described his experiences of Britain and preparations for the D-Day landings. His daughter Suzanne shares some of these in the article below.

The Victorians had a morbid fear of being removed from their coffins in the dead of night by Resurrection Men, to be used as dissection specimens for medical students. When rumours of grave robbing arose at one cemetery, a crowd gathered and the mob turned ugly…

Probably the most famous surveyors in history, Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason set out across pre-Civil War America to solve a boundary dispute. For many, their Dixon-Mason Line would later come to represent the dividing line between north and south, between free and slave states…

Dover Castle stands imperious overlooking the harbour and across the sea to France. Underneath this imposing castle lies a myriad of clandestine tunnels, the nerve centre for Allied strategy for the invasion of Normandy, including Operation Fortitude, designed to deceive, confuse and distract the Germans prior to D-Day…

Operation Pointblank was one of the plans designed to protect the troops landing on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Instead of focusing bombing campaigns on German cities and industry, the objective of this new plan was to drive the Luftwaffe from the sky…