The Winchester Rifle, the iconic gun made in New Haven, Connecticut, and sold in its hundreds of thousands around the world, mirrors American expansion at a key period in the young country's history. The lethal repeating rifle became the defining image of America's frontier-and was known amongst Native Americans as "the spirit gun." It represented both the pioneering vigour and the brutal force which conquered the West. Laura Trevelyan explores the history of, and the family behind, this renowned representation of American power. The entrepreneurial drive of Oliver Winchester led the rifle to...

"It is a rule that no Trevelyan ever sucks up either to the press, or the chiefs, or the "right people". The world has given us money enough to enable us to do what we think is right. We thank it for that and ask no more of it, but to be allowed to serve it" - G.M. Trevelyan. The Trevelyans are unique in British social and political history: a family which for several generations dedicated themselves to the service and chronicling of their country, from the radical, reforming civil servant Charles Edward Trevelyan to the historian G.M. Trevelyan. Often eccentric, priggish, high minded and...