What percentage of the printed and online media is dedicated to celebrity culture today? A tricky calculation; but there is no doubt that the percentage was pretty high when mass media first acquired a recognisably modern form in the Regency period. Peter James Bowman shows how, following the outrageous fame of Lord Byron, an interest in the foibles rather than the achievements of prominent individuals was kindled and sustained by newspapers, satirical prints and society gossip. Here are f...

Her father is a vain, foolish baronet, obsessed with his lineage but so careless with money that he is obliged to quit his ancestral seat. Her sister is a fretful invalid with a good-natured husband and two disobedient sons. She herself falls in love with a handsome naval officer, and he with her, but her proud family consider his status and prospects inadequate. Heartbroken, the lovers part: he goes to sea while she leads a forlorn life at home. Years later he returns with a fortune in pr...

Lene is an orphaned seamstress; Botho is a nobleman and an officer in one of the Prussian army's most glittering regiments. But whatever their differences of class and education, their hearts are equal to each other. Over the course of a summer in 1870s Berlin, they enjoy a clear-eyed, tender love affair, in spite of the judgements and warnings of those around them.The end comes all too soon, and Botho marries a wealthy cousin. When, years later, Lene too has an opportunity to marr...

What was it like to live in a Victorian Household? What time did the servants have to get up? What was the food like and who cooked it? How did the clothing differ for the different types of servants? How much did the servants get paid? This book shows you what it was really like to live in Victorian times, for those both above and below stairs.

Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography of Britain’s greatest novelist by bestselling author Claire Tomalin, author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and Jane Austen: A Life‘Powerful and remarkable. It is a celebration of a great genius. No question: you put Tomalin’s book down knowing that you have met a living author’ Miriam Margolyes, The Times‘By far the most humane and imaginatively sympathetic accou...

As a Victorian lady, what unspoken rules governed what you wore, how you spoke, and how you filled your time? This fascinating book takes you back in time to show you just how your day would be, and how it differed from lower class life.

The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin is the acclaimed story of Nelly Ternan and Charles DickensWinner of the NCR Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize'This is the story of someone who - almost - wasn't there; who vanished into thin air. Her names, dates, family and experiences very nearly disappeared from the record for good ...'Claire Tomalin's multi-award-winning story of the life of Nelly Ternan and C...

During her long reign, Queen Victoria was the target of no fewer than eight assassination attempts. In seven of these cases her life was saved by poor marksmanship or misfiring weaponry, but one assailant managed to strike her with a finely wrought cane. Remarkably, all eight of her attackers lived to tell their tales, and were variously incarcerated in asylums, deported to Australia, or in a few cases eventually released into society again.Paul Thomas Murphy shows how these obscur...

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE-WINNER, THE FIVE, THE WOMEN KILLED BY JACK THE RIPPER***'***Under her pen, history comes alive' Professor Dame Sue Black'A fabulous 18th-century tale. Hallie Rubenhold tells it beautifully' Telegraph***'***As a historian and storyteller, Rubenhold is in a league of her own' Lite...

Country houses were reliant on an intricate hierarchy of servants, each of whom provided an essential skill. Up and Down Stairs brings to life this hierarchy and shows how large numbers of people lived together under strict segregation and how sometimes this segregation was broken, as with the famous marriage of a squire to his dairymaid at Uppark. Jeremy Musson captures the voices of the servants who ran these vast houses, and made them work. From unpublished memoirs to letters, wages, ne...

'I delight in this work', wrote the young Victoria shortly after she became Queen. She was an engaging creature, high-spirited and eager to be 'amused'. But her early years were difficult ones. Fatherless from the age of eight months, she was brought up at Kensington Palace in an atmosphere thick with family feuds, backbiting and jealousy - the focus of conflicting ambitions. Though her uncle William IV was anxious to bring her into Court circles, her German mothe...

'A sublime piece of literary detective work that shows us once and for all how to be precisely the sort of reader that Austen deserves.' Caroline Criado-Perez, GuardianAlmost everything we think we know about Jane Austen is wrong. Her novels don't confine themselves to grand houses and they were not written just for readers' enjoyment. She writes about serious subjects and her books are deeply subversive. We just don't read her properly - we haven't been re...