When Northern Irish Protestants speak of Ulster, they mean only their six counties of the nine in that ancient kingdom.

ECONOMIST: Johnson

In The Lord of the Rings, the king spends most of the novel fighting evil and restoring the ancient kingdom of his forefathers.

BBC: Afghan hopes ride on ex-king

Mr Hun Sen is said to be obsessed with Cambodia's ancient Khmer kingdom, which built the awesome Angkor Wat complex and once ruled much of Indochina.

ECONOMIST: One of the last (we hope) Asian strongmen

The gateway to the hill country is Kandy, the capital of an ancient Sri Lankan kingdom that, thanks to its strategic elevated position, held off 16th-century European invaders for several hundred years longer than the rest of the island.

BBC: Getting to the heart and soul of hilly Sri Lanka

Along the way, he exposes readers to early British civilisation, Egyptian pyramids, ancient Assyria and the Kingdom of Benin in the 13th century.

ECONOMIST: Japanese cartoons

The ancient Games were established to create a truce among the many warring factions and foster general peace in the kingdom.

BBC: The story of the Olympics, with a bit of flair

Then she told us this story: In ancient times, when much of North India was divided into small principalities, our ancestors were the rulers of a kingdom called Kukraj, somewhere near Jaipur, in Rajasthan.

NPR: In The Kitchen With Madhur Jaffrey