This edited article about Napoleon originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 110 published on 22 February 1964.

Napoleon on his deathbed clutching the cross of the Legion d’honneur which he had himself founded

The storm which came sweeping in from the sea battered at the doors and windows of Longwood House on the lonely island of St. Helena. Draughts crept in through cracks in the badly-built walls and made the candles flicker.

Weak light played over the face of the man who lay on the little curtained bed. Only the faintest suggestion of movement under the blankets showed that he was alive.

The merest whisper came from the delicate, half-open lips: “At . . . the head . . . of the . . . army . . .”

And then no more.

At ten minutes to six on the evening of May 5, 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte died, and the people gathered around his bedside wept.

So ended the life of the greatest soldier the world has ever known. For six years Napoleon had been living in exile on St. Helena, an island in the middle of the Atlantic, where he had been sent by his British conquerors. And for the whole of that time he had been guarded night and day, for fear that he might escape and plunge Europe into war again.

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This edited article about Captain Robert Falcon Scott originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 809 published on 16th July 1977.

Captain Scott’s expedition to the South Pole

When the old whaling ship, Terra Nova, edged her way out of London’s river on 1st June, 1910, her captain, Robert Falcon Scott, was not aboard. He was in Capetown, South Africa, raising money for his Polar Expedition.

It seems strange, nowadays, to realise that he had to beg in order to pay for the privilege of attempting to be the first man to reach the South Pole. But Scott was a remarkable man. Though short, he had great physical strength.

Among his party were Dr. E. C. Wilson, who was in charge of the scientific staff, Petty Officer Evans, and two army officers, Lieut. Henry R. Bowers and Captain L. E. G. Oates.

It was in Melbourne, Australia, on the journey south, that Scott received a fateful telegram. It read: BEG LEAVE TO INFORM YOU PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC – AMUNDSEN. So it would be a race to the Pole between him and the famous Norwegian explorer.

On the voyage and long before the real hazards began, things were difficult enough. The ship sprang a leak and the pumps failed; later they had to battle their way through pack ice. Finally, however, they reached Cape Evans in McMurdo Sound, and sledging journeys were undertaken to lay down food depots before the winter set in.

Then they settled down to await summer, when they would make their dash to the Pole, refusing to be panicked by the news that Amundsen and his party had made a landing far nearer to the great objective.

At last came the sun, and a party, equipped with motor sledges, set out as an advance guard. They reached the Great Barrier, but near Camp Corner, after a journey over the hummocked ice, the motor sledges had to be abandoned. When Scott caught up with them with his ponies, he was greatly disappointed. But at least the motor sledges had saved the ponies from a difficult stretch of hauling.

Now at last all the months of planning had reached their climax. The route ahead was clear, up the Beardmore Glacier and due south to the Pole – nine hundred miles (1,450 km) of tough going.

At first, all went well. But then unseasonable weather began to delay them. Marching into strong headwinds and snowstorms, they still managed to cover fifteen miles (24 km) a day, but the ponies were now becoming exhausted.

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This edited article about Sir Humphrey Gilbert originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 659 published on 31 August 1974.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert claims Newfoundland in 1583 by Andrew Howat

It had not been a happy voyage, which was hardly surprising as many of the sailors were ex-pirates, but now the little fleet had safely reached St. John’s, Newfoundland. This was Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s great moment, for he was about to plant England’s first colony overseas. He took possession of the island in the Queen’s name, claimed a suitable amount of land for himself and his heirs, and announced that if anyone spoke “dishonestly” of the Queen, “he shall lose his ears and have his ship and goods confiscated.”

And so the mightiest of all empires was born, though, alas, this first fragment of it collapsed almost before it started, and a few weeks later Gilbert was dead.

What had gone wrong?

Sir Humphrey Gilbert was born in 1539 in Devonshire, where many of Elizabeth’s eagles began their soaring careers. He was one of the unluckiest of them, though he brought some of his troubles on himself, for, unlike his great kinsman, Sir Walter Raleigh, he was not a born leader of men. Educated at Oxford, he spent his early manhood fighting in France, and then in Ireland, where he was knighted for his services. The English were planting settlers there, and this turned his mind to empire-building.

As early as 1566 he was petitioning the Queen to let him try to find the fabulous North-West Passage to China from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic seas. Not until our own century has it been “found,” and then only by tough modern ice-breakers, but the dream was a reasonable one and he was not the first to try and find it.

The Queen, however, thought he was better employed in Ireland and did not answer him. After more service, then a spell as Plymouth’s M.P., he fought with the Dutch against the Spanish in the Netherlands, then returned to write about his dreams.

He made a basic mistake which was to cost him dear, for he believed that a colony could be peopled by “gallows-fodder” – wrongdoers, idlers and outright criminals – and too many people at that time shared his views, unlike the writer, Francis Bacon, who said it was shameful for “scumme” and “wretched condemned men” to be “planted” and rightly suggested that the ideal colonists would be carpenters, labourers, ploughmen, doctors and so on.

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This edited article about Ancient Rome originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 621 published on 8 December 1973.

‘The Ideas of March’ by Sir Edward John Poynter, depicts  Calpurnia trying to persuade Caesar not to go to the Senate

‘This young man,’ said the Roman dictator Sulla, ‘hides the soul of a Marius.’

Marius was Sulla’s great and deadly political rival, one of the most powerful men in the Roman republic in the last century before the birth of Christ.

The tousled-haired young man of whom Sulla spoke did indeed hide the soul of a Marius. But he hid much more than that. For although the daggers of assassins were to bring the career of Gaius Julius Caesar to an untimely end, he stands as one of the few men who, single-handed, changed the history of the world.

Arguably the greatest soldier of all time, a scholar and writer of distinction, and an orator and statesman of wonderful insight, Caesar, born in the year 100 B.C., was the greatest of all the Romans.

His parents were wealthy patricians, but there was nothing aloof about young Caesar. He had a ready smile and wore his clothes carelessly. Who would not have laughed to scorn the suggestion that this relaxed and affable youth would some day be the conqueror of the world and the most powerful man in Rome?

During the civil wars between Marius, of the popular or plebeian party, and Sulla, of the aristocratic or patrician party, Caesar had to hurry into exile. This was because Sulla, during the period of his dictatorship, was brutally executing all who had supported his rival Marius.

When he returned to Rome at Sulla’s death, Caesar concealed a shrewd purpose under that smiling exterior. He had seen in exile how vast the Roman dominions had grown, and yet how corrupt was the rule of the republic in Rome. In that rule the distribution of wealth was fearfully unequal, and capital and pauperism faced each other menacingly. There was only one way to put that right, Caesar decided, and that was by the iron rule of one man.

And that one man was himself.

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This edited article about Sir Thomas More originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 881 published on 2 December 1978.

Sir Thomas More and his wife entertain Henry VIII at their home in Chelsea by Ken Petts

The moment Sir Thomas More entered the courtroom, people could tell that he was a dying man. Even if he was found not guilty of high treason, and was not beheaded, his weak, shuffling walk, dim eyes, and stooped figure, signalled his impending death.

A murmur of sympathy sounded through London’s Westminster Hall, as the great statesman and writer moved slowly towards the dock. He used a stick to keep himself upright. But, even so, he twice almost fell as he faced the Court of the King’s Bench.

The Attorney-General, Sir Christopher Hale, was one of the few who did not feel sorry for the sick man. He eyed More coldly, as he told how the former Lord Chancellor had refused to take the Oath of Supremacy and accept King Henry VIII as supreme head of the English Church.

Looking much older than his 57 years, Sir Thomas listened attentively to him and replied: “Concerning the matters you now charge and challenge me with, the truth is so wordy and long that I fear that neither my wit nor my memory, nor yet my voice, will serve to make as full and sufficient an answer as the seriousness of the matter does demand.”

This short, but emotional, opening speech visibly took its toll of More, who had suffered a long and painful confinement in the Tower of London. He swayed as he addressed the jury, and was then allowed to sit down.

With effort, he continued his defence by stating: “For my taciturnity and silence, neither your law, nor any law in the world, is able justly and rightly to punish me.”

Immediately, the Attorney-General jumped to his feet protesting: “Though we have not one deed or word of yours to object to against you, yet we have your silence, which is an evident sign of the malice in your heart.”

“That is not so,” replied More, with a determined show of spirit. “He who keeps silence gives his consent. I have never openly criticised His Majesty for breaking with the Church of Rome. I have merely refused to sign an oath supporting his action.”

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This edited article about Charles I and the Earl of Strafford originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 876 published on 28 October 1978.

The Earl of Strafford on the way to his public execution by Hyppolyte Paul Delaroche

“He wants to be dictator of England! He’s the King’s favourite! He has his own private army and he plans to suppress the people with it!”

The awed whispers that had started in London became shouts of rage and indignation as they swept round the country. The subject of them, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, did not bat an eyelid. He was a charmless, hard-headed Yorkshireman who never showed any emotion – so right to the end no one could honestly say whether or not he was planning to become the dictator of England.

But Strafford, called “Black Tom” by all who knew him on account of his dark hair and his gloomy, foreboding countenance, and the fact that he always wore black Puritan clothes, was certainly the King’s man. Charles the First, friendless wherever he turned as the melancholy clouds of war brooded over England, relied more and more upon Black Tom for advice. The King had made him Lord President of the North and Lord Deputy of Ireland.

Now it was rumoured that Black Tom would soon be Lord of All England. Who would have dreamed that between these two friends, the haughty Yorkshireman and the lofty King, staunchly united against the people, there would one day soon be a terrible betrayal?

In the early years of the 17th century, it was not a far-sighted man who chose to become the friend of King Charles the First. At Portsmouth, the King’s feckless favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was run through with a sword. “God bless you!” cried the people, as the murderer stood back to admire his handiwork.

For any friend of the King who believed he ruled by God’s divine right, and therefore could rule as he chose, was considered to be an enemy of the people.

Black Tom was different from the fast-spending and unscrupulous Villiers. As Leader of the House of Commons – he had become an M.P. through the wealth of his father, a Yorkshire wool-merchant – he tried to play a double game. He supported all the measures in the Commons aimed at curbing the power of the arrogant King and at the same time did his best to curry royal favour.

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This edited article about Admiral Lord Nelson originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 869 published on 9 September 1978.

The Death of Nelson by Benjamin West

With a tremendous roar, the French ship Achille, which had been burning for an hour and a half, blew up. Her wreckage rapidly vanished beneath the waves and the Battle of Trafalgar was finally over. It was the greatest naval victory in British history since a combination of English sea dogs, fine ships and a friendly wind beat the Spanish Armada. That had been in 1588, but now it was 5 o’clock in the afternoon of 21st October, 1805, and the combined French and Spanish fleets had suffered a decisive defeat.

It was difficult in the confused aftermath of victory for the British ships to communicate with each other, but when night came a shadow fell across the hearts of every sailor in the fleet.

No admiral’s lights were to be seen aboard the flagship Victory, and soon everyone from senior captains to humble powder monkeys – the boys who carried powder to the guns – knew that their beloved commander, Admiral Lord Nelson, had been killed.

A musket ball from a French sniper, perched high in the mizzen mast of the Redoutable, had struck the Admiral’s shoulder and finally lodged in his spine; but he had lived long enough to know that his ships were completely victorious.

The consternation and grief around the fleet was best summed up by an ordinary sailor writing a letter home, which, far more than more august efforts, shows what he and his comrades had felt about Nelson:

I never set eyes on him, for which I am both sorry and glad for, to be sure, I should like to have seen him; but then, all the men in our ship who have seen him are such soft toads. They have done nothing but blast their eyes and cry ever since he was killed. God bless you chaps, that fought like the Devil and sit down and cry like a wench.

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Archimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, inventor and astronomer born around 287 BC. Few details of his life are known but his works are still known to this day as he founded some of the basic principals of maths and physics.

Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier during the siege of Syracuse

Amongst his mathematical innovations was a method to calculate the area under an arc, various formulae and a remarkably accurate approximation of pi; in physics he explained the principals of the lever and laid the foundations for studies in hydrostatics and statics. He is also credited with a number of innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that carries his name.

Famously, he discovered that he could measure the density of an object by determining how much water it displaced, the principal of which he realised when he lowered himself into a bath. He took to the streets naked, excitedly shouting “Eureka!”

Archimedes died in circa  212 BC during the Siege of Syracuse, killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he was not to be harmed. As the soldier came in to deliver his fatal blow, Archimedes asked:

“Wait until I have finished my problem.”

Many more pictures relating to science and scientists throughout the ages can be found at the Look and Learn picture library.

Sir Isaac Pitman is best known for his creation of a shorthand system known as Pitman shorthand. Born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, on 4 January 1813, Pitman became a teacher and taught at a private school he founded in Wotton-under-Edge.

Sir Isaac Pitman, who opened a school in Wotton-under-Edge to teach his newly developed shorthand. Illustration by Angus McBride

Active in the local church where he lived in Bath, Pitman was a non-drinker and vegetarian who distributed books and tracts locally, especially about his fascination for the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. He developed his system of shorthand which he first described in his book Stenographic Shorthand, published in 1837. To capitalise on its success, he set up Pitman Training, a company to provide training in office skills, at first teaching only men.

Pitman died on 12 January 1897, having left a message to those who might be interested:

To those who ask how Isaac Pitman passed away, say “Peacefully, and with no more concern than passing from one room to another to take up some further employment.

Many more pictures relating to authors and their works can be found at the Look and Learn picture library.

Oliver Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish author, poet and physician, born in Ballymahon, Co. Longford, Ireland, on 10 November 1730, although some sources give his birthplace as Elphin, Co. Roscommon, and the date is also also disputed.

A portrait of the author Oliver Goldsmith

Goldsmith was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and University of Leiden, before travelling around Europe earning a crust by playing his flute and busking. Returning to England, he made his name as a writer; some of his better known works including the novel The Vicar of Wakefield and the plays The Good-Natur’d Man and She Stoops to Conquer.

Disorganised and always in debt because of an addiction to gambling, Goldsmith died on 4 April 1774, aged only 43. At the end, a doctor asked “Is your mind at ease?”, to which Goldsmith replied:

“No, it is not.”

Many more pictures relating to authors and their works can be found at the Look and Learn picture library.