Magna Carta: Unlocked

On 15 June 1215 the signatories to a momentous document gathered in a field by the banks of the Thames: King John, rebellious barons and senior clergy led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. Magna Carta is regarded as the founding text of English liberties, a key part of constitutions across the globe and the inspiration behind the UN's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Sir Isaac Newton is one of the towering geniuses of science. Active across an astounding range of disciplines, he also found time to be an MP, Master of the Royal Mint and a magistrate. To what extent was the flowering of this man's mind only possible in a particular set of circumstances? Was there something about the England of his day that made it fertile ground for intellectual enquiry?

England in the early eighteenth century was in a sorry state. Politics was corrupt, the democratic system broken. The Stock Market crashed. Many were trapped in addiction and despair. Then something remarkable happened. A thirty-five-year-old man called John Wesley started traveling the country. Wherever he went, he preached in the open air, telling people that there was a God who loved them.

John Wilkes is a comparatively little-known figure today, but in the mid-to-late-eighteenth century he was at the epicentre of events which shook the British Establishment and helped lay the groundwork for modern civil liberties. He sided with the American colonists against the Crown. He fought for freedom of the press. Wilkes was the inheritor of a tradition which is grounded in Magna Carta.

The battle of Waterloo (the last engagement of Napoleon's so-called Hundred Days) was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, just south of Brussels in modern Belgium. Napoleon had 71,947 men and 246 guns under his command, the Duke of Wellington slightly fewer with 67,655 men and 156 guns. Bonaparte's troops were seasoned veterans willing to die for their Emperor.