In 1787, Catherine the Great set off on a six-month tour of Crimea, a territory Russia had annexed only four years earlier. The emperor of Austria and a group of European diplomats travelled with her. Along the route, triumphal arches had been built specially for the occasion, and the inscription they carried was hard to […]

“I have sent him a ribbon when, in fact, what he deserved was a rope.” This phrase is attributed to King George IV of England, and the ribbon in question would be that of the Order of the Bath, which had just been awarded to Edward Codrington, the admiral who had achieved victory in the […]