Just some combination like Japan Guangdong forced labour Hainan should turn up a few pointers. I don't know if forced labour was much used within Guangdong or if local people were deported to Japan like some in the north: that might be another topic to look for, but I haven't seen any mentions.

Civilians from both Guangdong and Hong Kong were dragooned as forced labour for Hainan's mines and associated railway & port construction. Some such intended fate seems the likeliest candidate, unless he was suspected of political association with the republic's cause or with the British colonial authorities. It was certainly a lucky escape, conditions for the Hainan workers having been exceptionally harsh and treatment of suspected enemies harsher still.

I don't think it necessarily would, though: the Austrians hadn't fought a last-ditch battle at the city gates, so it couldn't be assumed in Russia either with the assets of its space and its weather, especially given the capital's peripheral location. A calculation that the enemy might leave him to plod around an abandoned palace as his troops froze or starved wouldn't have been unreasonable.

I'd say Said was cleverly associating his target with a term that was already falling into disrepute. Geographical shifts in scholarship may also have contributed, Asia being Asia wherever you are, but "Orient" making little sense if it's to your north, south or west.

My parents were of Norwich's vintage but I don't recall encountering either form in childhood except in "We Three Kings" (which I think left us all initially puzzled) or perhaps in period TV dialogue, and thereafter it was already perceived as old-fashioned, so I think Said was using that to his advantage.

... or Britain's various colonial withdrawals, portrayed as a generous granting of independence that had of course been intended all along. In Germany it became bound up with sinister ultranationalist tropes and militaristic nostalgia for supposed wartime solidarity: at least few Vietnam vets wanted a re-run, even if political figures envisaged a global comeback.

The Austrian campaign of 1809 may also have convinced him that victory on the battlefield counted for more than a capital: then it took eight more weeks to settle the issue, but Russia's huge distances might drag that out into the winter and beyond. In the event, even Moscow didn't deliver the decisive win, but that couldn't readily be foreseen in the summer.

I think it was already fading then in favour of the more explicitly relative "East" or fixed area names (the earlier eclipse of "Oriental" presumably having a part in it), though Levant (the same word) survives for the eastern Mediterranean region. Norwich may consciously be adopting an old usage in keeping with the local style of the period, though in England it would probably have been more commonly just "the East".

While St Petersburg may have been the more prestigious prize, Moscow would have been strategically the more valuable city, offering routes to the north, east and south and hopefully less challenging climatic conditions (even if these weren't mild in the event): the northern capital is attractive but strategically something of a dead-end unless your adversary chooses to stake everything on holding it, which couldn't be assumed.

OK, I understand now. I'd really like to see a good series on China or Japan, but sadly I've never encountered any that fit the bill. For WW2 the UK series The World at War (26 hour-long episodes) remains highly regarded, though I still recall the BBC's earlier 6-part Grand Strategy as a good overview. The latter sadly seems forgotten, but a search for the former may be rewarding. ;)

>Perhaps if the monarchy hadn't been, or hadn't been seen as, the puppet of foreign interests, Iranians wouldn't have had such a dislike for it.

That was a big trigger in 1979, but over the longer term there had also been an erosion of perceived domestic legitimacy of successive dynasties from the 18th century onward: the last dynasty's origin in a fairly modern-looking military coup (allegedly with British involvement) didn't endear it to legitimist detractors, though as ever the clergy varied in its engagement with the throne.

Religious traditionalists were also alienated by the Pahlavi rulers' sporadic modernisation efforts: it's too readily forgotten that Khomeini's final breach with the throne came not over its pro-western leanings or autocratic rule but over the 1963 land reform which he saw as eroding the proper rural hierarchy. The revolution's mix of popular and traditionalist aspirations underlies much of its subsequent evolution and the idiosyncrasies we may find perplexing.

Do you mean a single-episode treatment covering the entire history of each of China, Japan or WW2? That's a big ask, because it would be impossible to do justice to the subject without the thing running to series length. I suppose you might just be able to squeeze an overview of Japan or WW2 into 3-4 hours, but it would have to leave out vast amounts: for China without even Japan's dynastic continuity or reasonably compact geography, it would be a hopeless exercise.

Video can be good at relating individual themes or events, but for the whole story there's really nothing else for it but reading - and even then a single treatment gives you only one version of events and their cause and significance (unless it brings in multiple scholarly viewpoints, which is a good format but adds to the length), so you need a few different takes to begin to form a rounded picture (not all necessarily book-length - journal articles can be valuable for specific events or topics).

Each is really too big to take on in a single bound, so it's far better to tackle individual periods or themes ("events" not so much at first, they're better understood once you've the context). But video has its limitations, and I suspect you're drawing a blank in your search because here you're encountering those limitations.

Excellent, that was timely! It's not Siemann, is it? That came out in the original German a few years earlier.

In Our Time did an episode back in 2017: the associated reading list fills in a few gaps, closer to what I expected:

Mark Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy After Napoleon (I.B. Tauris 2014)

David King, Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (Broadway Books 1993)

Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22 (first published 1954; Echo Point Books & Media 2013)

Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity 1812-1822 (1946; Grove Press 2000)

Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics: 1763-1848 (Clarendon Press 1996)

Brian E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Harvard University Press 2014)

Adam Zamoyski, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (Harper Perennial 2008)

A translation might come along - it may be worth asking the publisher if one's planned.

A related question popped up here, and I was surprised not to find more recent works, so I hope someone can add other suggestions.

Besides the Jarrett title mentioned there, Harold Nicolson's The Congress of Vienna relates the contributions of the various principals, but after 77 years that's getting pretty long in the tooth.

For the perspectives of individual players it might be worth consulting biographies: there's a recent sympathetic reappraisal of Metternich by Wolfram Siemann, but sceptics might be left unconvinced that he was the visionary suggested.

The author and the date are both significant: Khomeini went far further than most of the religious leadership in his opposition to the Shah's personal rule, and here he's simultaneously proclaiming the illegitimacy of the then regime and the need for clerical leadership of a new state. It's really the moment when the outlines of the post-1979 order are first laid out.

But it wasn't always always thus: the clergy had held the Safavid dynasty in high regard (reciprocating its promotion of clerical authority), and even after viewing its successors as usurpers, senior religious figures made their peace with the Shah after the 1953 coup before their falling-out in the 1960s gave the already outspoken Khomeini his opportunity to claim spiritual leadership of the opposition movement.

Nor was Khomeini's authoritarian clericalist take characteristic of past anti-regime religious sentiment, senior religious figures often siding from the 1890s with popular protest movements (to some extent foreshadowing 1979) and being associated with the 1906-11 constitutionalist movement and (at least for a time) the parliamentary cause in the early 1950s. The republic's eventual form was in part a historical accident, Khomeini emerging just as an earlier generation of leaders was passing from the scene.

A government in exile doesn't really count as control, though, so I'd say from 1942 to 1944/45 the islands were "under" Japan, the US and the Commonwealth government retaining their claim but not yet able to enforce it. For a few months during the Japanese invasion and the subsequent US recapture, parts were Japanese-controlled and parts US-controlled, but in between the US was out of the picture in terms of de facto possession.

I'm with the doubters here, except possibly in relation to Monet's 1899-1901 London works. London had long been famed for its smoke, efforts to control pollution dating back to the capital's rapid growth (and that of its coal shipments) around 1600, but into Turner's time much of that use remained domestic rather than industrial: the big increase would come later, with British per capita use (domestic, industrial and transport) nearly doubling from 2.6 tonnes in 1850 to 5 by 1900, a period when London's population grew 2½-fold, and the paper itself indicates that 70% of the rise in the metropolis's sulphur dioxide emissions occurred after Turner's death.

The chart suggests that Paris was a pollution minnow compared even with Turner's London, so if Monet was looking for hazy scenes, London around 1900 would be the place to go: half a century earlier, not so much, at least so far as industry's contribution is concerned.

Indeed it took a good deal less than a century: only a decade after the 1812 war London was proposing a joint declaration against Europe's monarchies seizing territory in the Americas; Monroe chose to go it alone, but Britain backed the policy despite implicitly being among those being warned off. Trade shows a still faster recovery in the 1780s and 1810s: within a few years of each war you'd think nothing had happened.

Besides the obvious affinities between their ruling elites, part of the explanation is that with the US renouncing any involvement in Europe's affairs and preoccupied with westward expansion across the North American continent, there was for a century little basis for friction once British rue was gone, apart from the 1840s border dispute, Civil War complications and the brief Venezuela flurry. The two powers shared a distaste for European rivals' imperial designs, Washington wanting to keep Europe "over there" while London prized commercial access to non-European lands, a growing US priority too by mid-century: nor until the 1940s did the US show any inclination to assume the global financial leadership claimed by Britain.

It was ultimately a marriage of convenience, based in the first century on broadly compatible strategic and commercial perspectives, and in the second on waning British capacity to go it alone as others challenged its industrial lead and - unthinkably - its naval supremacy. Once Britain abandoned any fantasies of reconquering its lost North American colonies and US hotheads were talked out seizing Canada, there was little to do but make the best of it.

The width of a roll of fabric: luckily the length doesn't matter as that varied, so I don't need to see that! Standard widths are a constant issue, and i have one in mind that I want to test: the piece is later than the period I'm looking at, but the measurements may have persisted. It wouldn't prove anything, but it would be suggestive.

It's so easy to lose what we learned at school as life takes its toll of our mental storage space - but oddly I find a lot of it's still buried away, waiting to be re-awakened. I still haven't found a use for the Blanca Manca estancia, but I'm sure one will turn up.

PS. Food and Tudors are each an excellent place to start, with enormous potential for branching out - agriculture, trade, European affairs, empire... and Tudors are always in vogue.

Thanks for reminding me, I'm due for a trip before the Easter throngs. And I need to take a tape measure to the V&A, I wish they'd give exhibits' measurements.

"Fun and creative" seems best done with other people: others will be in the same boat, and you can pool resources. See if there's a group interested in whatever aspects take your fancy? Local would be better, but online's a start, and you can trade ideas and maybe get something going. Maybe arrange group museum visits followed by a discussion?

For updating your knowledge, I recommend starting from some topic of particular interest and then radiating out from there, chronologically, geographically or thematically, or all three: that way you can take it at your own pace rather than biting off too much all at once (which reminds me again, I need to read up on Japan, too long on my "to do" list).

It gave a very good impression of having done just that: its army was in retreat, the would-be architect of victory Ludendorff had cracked up and run off, its allies were falling in rapid succession (by the last week there weren't any left) and the civilian population was at the end of its tether.

Militarists and nationalists subsequently boasted that the army remained in being, that Germany had not been invaded, and that it had signed an armistice rather than a surrender, and therefore that it wasn't a defeat - the corollary being that in dictating disadvantageous peace terms the allies had somehow abused German magnanimity in calling it a day.

But in reality, by late 1918 the Reich's options were few and unappetising: the big push in the west hadn't achieved the promised victory, and Allied commanders had at last worked out how to overcome the formidable German defences after four years of trial & error, while the US would become an ever more powerful factor in Allied strength.

Germany might have fought on into 1919, but for what? It had lost, and the subsequent treaty was about as just as anything that was likely to emerge from the carnage. The "let's call it a technical draw" take was understandable as a desperate spin by negotiators seeking easier peace terms, but bore little resemblance to reality.

OK, that narrows it down a bit - maybe too much, because I can't find anything that really fits the bill: what's out there tends to be too general, too academic or coming at it from a more ideological or sectional standpoint - which is fine, it's just probably not what you're looking for.

What you do have is the luxury of being able to pick from both academic and popular treatments to suit your purpose. I'd start by familiarising yourself with existing relevant works, evaluating each kind for the elements you're looking for even if you don't find the style there that you want: the "tricks of the trade" are there on the page, it's just a matter of selecting those that work best.

In terms of material, for the popular side you can draw largely on those secondary works, but for the more scholarly angle you'd want to delve into the archives - and maybe census returns for the labour environment and women's participation, while for Prohibition I wouldn't overlook contemporary newspapers which can often provide valuable period detail. Recorded eyewitness testimony can add further flavour: the 1920s may be too early to feature in any but the earliest oral history collections but may be recounted in intervening documentaries (for which unused material may also occasionally survive).

Sorry I drew a blank: I hope there's the odd useful idea there. Perhaps when you're finished you can write the guide too - there seems to be a gap in the market.

While the basic plans are known from surveys and digs and fragmentary accounts survive along with the occasional tablet or relief showing a peripheral part of the layout (at least for Babylon), there isn't enough for a reliable cityscape or reconstruction of daily life. A lot remains to be excavated, though, so hopefully more will turn up when conditions are favourable.

Social history (like history in general) covers a wide range of themes and approaches, and there isn't a uniform style: it can be a dry analytical treatment or a bodice-ripping account of the racier side of life; it can cover anything from the development of working-class identity and organisation or the situation of women in the family and economic or public life to the evolution of elite taste & etiquette, the latter mercifully not so much in favour nowadays.

So it would help if you could be a bit more specific about the kind of topic or framework you have in mind: each brings its own challenges and likely readership. And do you mean the actual writing, or rather the appropriate research techniques and sources?

If the project's to thrive, most important is a strong sense of distinct shared identity and a competent political leadership capable of uniting the country and winning international recognition. Anyone can declare independence and set up a government: that's the easy part; making it last is another matter, and the conditions for success and for effective statehood can't be conjured out of nothing.