Dr Cannon studies the workings of the eighteenth-century constitution, concentrating on the years of acute crisis from 1782 to 1784. He examines the formation of the Fox-North coalition, its achievement of office in March 1783, and the manoeuvres by which it was eventually ousted. In doing so he throws light on several obscure questions, such as the reasons for Shelburne's unpopularity, the part played by William Pitt over the India Bill (based on...

Cold and isolated, yet home to some 4 million people; harsh and unyielding, yet disintegrating with every passing year, the Arctic defies definition. In the modern mind it represents the quintessentially timeless; its landscape imagined both as a realm of crystalline purity and as a frozen kingdom of dread and death. A unique ecosystem that hosts such beloved creatures as the polar bear and the narwhal and serves as the homeland for some of the world's...