Miss Austen's life coincided with two of the momentous epochs of history,—the American struggle for independence, and the French Revolution; but there is scarcely an allusion to either in her letters. She was interested in the fleet and its victories because two of her brothers were in the navy a...

Chips from the White House
A collection of letters, conversations, diaries, addresses and speeches from the first 20 Presidents of the United States of America.
This audiobook is an abridged version of the full text.
The following audio contains outdated references about race. In the interest of...

In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton set out with a hand picked crew to meet what he described as the last great polar challenge. They would cross the Antarctic continent from shore to shore via the South Pole. It was a daring plan in the most inhospitable place on earth. Intending to walk where no man...

Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 - 1901, giving her name to an age of history. These diaries were kept, at her mother's behest, in the years before she became queen and until just after her accession. A young girl can be seen moving from having no understanding of her position and likely future, th...

A Periplus is a document detailing ports and coastal landmarks which also seeks to estimate distances between destinations. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea details the travels of merchants, probably during the mid-first century, though the date is disputed, around the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Ar...

Peter Abelard (c. 1079 - 1142) is considered one of the greatest thinkers of his age. Heloise d'Argenteuil (c. 1100 - 1164) was a gifted theologian and philosopher too. The couple fell in love and were secretly married, but when Heloise's uncle, her guardian, found out, he was moved to inflict a...

Edward Jenner (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) pioneered the development of treatment of smallpox using the cowpox virus. The term Variolae vaccinae ('smallpox of the cow') is the origin of the words vaccine and vaccination that we use more widely today. The full title of this piece is A Continuat...

Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, was born in Paris in 1694, dying there in 1778 aged 83. A celebrated philosopher, poet, and writer, he was arrested in 1726 as part of a feud with Guy Auguste de Rohan-Chabot. Imprisoned in the Bastille, he requested exile in Great Britain rather ...

Colonel Thomas Blood is a fascinating character whose background and personal history is explored in Wilbur Cortez Abbott's 1910 book subtitled Crown-Stealer. Blood's motivations, the political circumstances surrounding the attempt, and the surprising outcome of the theft are examined and explain...

The union between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn would redefine England and its relationships, with itself, and the world around. These letters were written by the king while he was still married to Catherine of Aragon but was courting Anne Boleyn, who was keeping herself just beyond his reach.

A diary kept during Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany's plan to conquer the western Soviet Union from June to December 1941.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written by an anonymous author in the 14th century. It tells the story of Sir Gawain, a nephew of King Arthur, and one of the Knights of the Round Table at Camelot. During the Christmas festivities, a mysterious green rider enters Arthur's hall and offers a cha...

In 1963 the resignation of John Profumo rocked the government as his affair with Christine Keeler was exposed to the world. In the aftermath of the scandal, Lord Denning was tasked with investigating whether any breaches of national security had been caused by Profumo's tryst with Keeler. It was ...