A genius on the throne: Lady Jane Grey remembered

│By André Buller, Gale Ambassador at the University of Portsmouth │

Throughout my historical studies, I remember the speed with which teachers and lecturers taught the Tudor period. Like a child faced with a wall of selections at the sweet shop, it’s practically impossible to give the entire period as much attention as one would like. Thus, more often than not the class would undergo a whistle-stop tour of the century, passing from the social unrest of Edward to the stark Catholicism of Mary’s reign with little consideration to what came in between. Lady Jane Grey has always been an interesting figure to me, and through the incredible resources of the Gale archives it is possible to inspect her further, and see how she has been remembered in the centuries that followed her brief and tragic reign.

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Soviets and the Spanish Civil War

By Rory Herbert, Gale Ambassador at the University of Portsmouth

Rafael Merry del Val (1865-1930) remarked in his manuscript on the Spanish Situation, written for Chatham House and accessed via Gale’s online archive, that Lenin viewed Spain as imperative to the eventual success of the Bolshevik revolution [1]. It should come as no surprise then that both prior to and following the outbreak of the civil war, the Soviet Union maintained a great interest in the outcome of this nation.

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On Her Majesty’s’ Secret Service – Elizabeth I in the age of spies

By Rory Herbert, Gale Ambassador at the University of Portsmouth

While I’m sure we’re all familiar with the daring tales of English privateers and explorers during the Elizabethan age, there remains a forgotten and crucial element that helped Elizabeth maintain power. Under her reign, and with the significant help of her counsel, Elizabeth helped to cultivate and manage an extensive network of intelligencers, spies and informants that spanned the length and breadth of the continent. And what better way to view these official government communiques than in Gale’s State Papers Online.

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