54 Quotes About English-history

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,I know of no reasonWhy the gunpowder treasonShould ever be forgot.Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intentTo blow up the King and Parli’ment.Three-score barrels of powder belowTo prove old England’s overthrow;By God’s providence he was catch’d With a dark lantern and burning match.Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Sir Walter Raleigh is more safely enshrined in the memory of mankind because he set his cloak for the Virgin Queen to walk on than because he carried the english name to undiscovered countries.

Even at rock bottom, when her doctors had thought she would go mad with grief, Victoria had spoken of endurance. She was 'determined', she wrote, that as a widow 'no one person, may he be ever so good ... is to lead, or guide, or dictate to me'.

With Bertie's illness, Victoria's return to her best self, the self she had lost in Albert, had begun.

The daily contents even of her bin 'would be more interesting than a year's file of The Times'.

Historian Dorothy Thompson has pointed out the double standard at work here. A king's having a mistress was regrettable, but ultimately acceptable. The possibility, though, of a female ruler having a sexual relationship outside of marriage, causes dismay and prurient ridicule.

The next draft of a bill outlining the punishments for homosexuality must omit all mention of females; it was unnecessary for 'women don't do such things'.

Victoria's courtiers generally shared the views of her administrators and colonial staff in India, which were that Indians were decidedly inferior to Europeans. Victoria, however, perhaps having less cause to worry about her status being challenged, was less prone to this, 'There is no hatred to a brown skin - none,' she wrote, even in the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

This bonnet, worn with resolution, had caused some upset. Her government had asked its queen to appear more ... queenly. 'The symbol that unties this vast Empire is a Crown not a bonnet,' complained Lord Roseberry. But Victoria stoutly refused, and 'the bonnet triumphed'.