Sixteen months later, the king’s fifth wife would follow her cousin Anne Boleyn to the scaffold, having been convicted of adultery and high treason. The broad outlines of Catherine’s career might be familiar, but her story up until now has been incomplete. Unlike previous accounts of her life, which portray her as a naïve victim of an ambitious family, this compelling and authoritative biography will shed new light on Catherine Howard’s rise and downfall by reexamining her motives and showing her in her context, a milieu that goes beyond her family and the influential men of the court to include the aristocrats and, most critically, the servants who surrounded her and who, in the end, conspired against her. By illuminating Catherine's entwined upstairs/downstairs worlds as well as societal tensions beyond the palace walls, the author offers a fascinating portrayal of court life in the sixteenth century and a fresh analysis of the forces beyond Catherine’s control that led to her execution—from diplomatic pressure and international politics to the long-festering resentments against the queen’s household at court. Including a forgotten text of Catherine’s confession in her own words, color illustrations, family tree, map, and extensive notes, Young and Damned and Fair changes our understanding of one of history’s most famous women while telling the compelling and very human story of complex individuals attempting to survive in a dangerous age.

    He was a handsome baronet with a promising career in government. The marriage of Lady Seymour Dorothy Fleming and Sir Richard Worsley had the makings of a fairy tale—but ended as one of the most scandalous and highly publicized divorces in history.In February 1782, England opened its newspapers to read the details of a criminal conversation trial in which the handsome baronet Sir Richard Worsley attempted to sue his wife’s lover for an astronomical sum in damages. In the course of the proceedings, the Worsleys’ scandalous sexual arrangements, voyeuristic tendencies, and bed-hopping antics were laid bare. The trial and its verdict stunned society, but not as much as the unrepentant behavior of Lady Worsley.Sir Joshua Reynolds captured the brazen character of his subject when he created his celebrated portrait of Lady Worsley in a fashionable red riding habit, but it was her shocking affairs that made her divorce so infamous that even George Washington followed it in the press. Impeccably researched and written with great flair, this lively and moving true history presents a rarely seen picture of aristocratic life in the Georgian era.

    A remarkable popular history of the English Civil War, from the perspectives of those involved in this most significant turning point in British history.The compelling narrative draws on new sources such as letters, memoirs, ballads and plays to bring to life the Roundheads and Cavaliers, the foot soldiers, war widows and witchfinders of one of the most significant turning points in British history, culminating in Oliver Cromwell’s triumph and the execution of Charles I.By blending the political and the personal, Diane Purkiss illuminates both the ideologies behind the English Civil War and the fears of those who fought in it; the men who were destroyed by the conflict and those, such as Oliver Cromwell, who were defined by it.

    Take your eye off it for more than a moment and you're lost.'Robert Elms has seen London change beyond all imagining: the house he grew up in is now the behemoth that is the Westway flyover, and areas once deemed murder miles have morphed into the stuff of estate agents' dreams, seemingly in a matter of months.Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. He is our guide through a place that has seen scientific experiments conducted in subterranean lairs, a small community declare itself an independent nation and animals of varying exoticism roam free through its streets; a place his great-great-grandfather made the Elms' home over a century ago and a city that has borne witness to epoch- and world-changing events.

    The tall flats built to replace the old 'slum' houses were unpopular. Social networks were broken up. The book had an immediate impact when it appeared - extracts were published in the newspapers, the sales were a record for a report of a sociological study, Government ministers quoted it. But the approach it advocated was not accepted until the late 1960s, and by then it was too late.This Routledge Revivals reissue includes the authors' introduction from the 1986 reissue, reviewing the impact of the book and its ideas thirty years on. They argue that if the lessons implicit in the book had been learned in the 1950s, London and other British cities might not have suffered the 'anomie' and violence manifested in the urban riots of the 1980s.

    If you want to be introduced painlessly to the fascinating debates surrounding our British past, then Britain BC is the book for you - Barry Cunliffe, New ScientistFrancis Pryor is a modern field archaeologist with a reputation second to none. He has written a book as successful and exciting as its ambition is huge...lucid and engaging - Alan Garner, The TimesSplendid...a remarkable, imaginative and persuasive account of those other Britons before that [Roman] enslavement: its enthusiastic and confident approach deserves to be very influential - Christopher Chippendale, Times Literary Supplement

    A must-have for fans of crime, horror, the supernatural and the simply bizarre, Bloody London will also show you:• Sites of executions and unsolved murders• London’s creepiest cemeteries• Where famous horror authors lived and worked• Where the Plague originated• A haunted churchand many other locations…London’s dark and shocking secrets are laid bare in this compendium of true stories. We dare you to look inside…

    Cowan provides the definitive account of the origins of coffee drinking and coffeehouse society, and in so doing he reshapes our understanding of the commercial and consumer revolutions in Britain during the long Stuart century.Britain’s virtuosi, gentlemanly patrons of the arts and sciences, were profoundly interested in things strange and exotic. Cowan explores how such virtuosi spurred initial consumer interest in coffee and invented the social template for the first coffeehouses. As the coffeehouse evolved, rising to take a central role in British commercial and civil society, the virtuosi were also transformed by their own invention.

    The greatest historians are vivid storytellers, Robert Lacey reminds us, and in Great Tales from English History, he proves his place among them, illuminating in unforgettable detail the characters and events that shaped a nation. In this volume, Lacey limns the most important period in England's past, highlighting the spread of the English language, the rejection of both a religion and a traditional view of kingly authority, and an unstoppable movement toward intellectual and political freedom from 1387 to 1689. Opening with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and culminating in William and Mary's "Glorious Revolution," Lacey revisits some of the truly classic stories of English history: the Battle of Agincourt, where Henry V's skilled archers defeated a French army three times as large; the tragic tale of the two young princes locked in the Tower of London (and almost certainly murdered) by their usurping uncle, Richard III; Henry VIII's schismatic divorce, not just from his wife but from the authority of the Catholic Church; "Bloody Mary" and the burning of religious dissidents; Sir Francis Drake's dramatic, if questionable, part in the defeat of the Spanish Armada; and the terrible and transformative Great Fire of London, to name but a few. Here Anglophiles will find their favorite English kings and queens, villains and victims, authors and architects - from Richard II to Anne Boleyn, the Virgin Queen to Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Pepys to Christopher Wren, and many more. Continuing the "eminently readable, highly enjoyable" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) history he began in volume I of Great Tales from English History, Robert Lacey has drawn on the most up-to-date research to present a taut and riveting narrative, breathing life into the most pivotal characters and exciting landmarks in England's history.

    Conveying the bewildering momentum of events as the King's peace is overtaken by suspicion, disorder and the sword, she writes history, said The Times, 'in the only way taht matters, as a living re-creation of the past'.'A superb book, beautifully written. I have no doubt at all that she makes the onset of the Civil War more intelligible than any historian before her' - A L RowseThe King's War 1641-1647 and The Trial of Charles I are also published by Penguin

    

    Captivated by the secrets, the scandal and the servant-master divide of an Edwardian household, viewers religiously watched in their millions. In Life Below Stairs, bestselling author Alison Maloney responds to the public's desire to know more, going behind the scenes to reveal a detailed picture of what really went on 'downstairs', describing the true-life trials and tribulations of the servants in a gripping non-fiction account. Thoroughly researched and reliably informed, it also contains first-hand stories from the staff of the time. This charming and beautifully presented volume is a must-read for anyone interested in the lifestyle and conduct of a bygone era.

    Quite the tragic love story, right?Wrong.In this electrifying exposé, Hayley Nolan explores for the first time the full, uncensored evidence of Anne Boleyn’s life and relationship with Henry VIII, revealing the shocking suppression of a powerful woman.So leave all notions of outdated and romanticised folklore at the door and forget what you think you know about one of the Tudors’ most notorious queens. She may have been silenced for centuries, but this urgent book ensures Anne Boleyn’s voice is being heard now.#TheTruthWillOut

    From Sophia who died shortly before she would have become Queen as heir to Queen Anne, to Adelaide, consort to William IV whose failure to provide an heir ensured the succession passed to his niece Queen Victoria. During this period, an array of colourful personalities came and went - George I's ill-fated wife Sophia Dorothea of Celle who was imprisoned for adultery for over 30 years until her death; the equally tragic Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark and sister of George III who married an incipient schizophrenic, saw her lover put to death, was divorced and imprisoned, released after pressure from her brother, only to die of typhoid or scarlet fever aged just 23; George IV's notorious consort , his cousin Caroline of Brunswick, who danced naked on tables and was refused access to his coronation; and their daughter Charlotte, whose death in childbirth in 1817 necessitated the hasty marriages of several of her middle-aged uncles in a desperate race to provide a legal heir to the throne.

    Two of these princesses would themselves produce children of immense consequence. All five would curiously come to share many of the social restrictions and familial machinations borne by nineteenth-century women of less-exulted class.Victoria and Albert's precocious firstborn child, Vicky, wed a Prussian prince in a political match her high-minded father hoped would bring about a more liberal Anglo-German order. That vision met with disaster when Vicky's son Wilhelm-- to be known as Kaiser Wilhelm-- turned against both England and his mother, keeping her out of the public eye for the rest of her life. Gentle, quiet Alice had a happier marriage, one that produced Alexandra, later to become Tsarina of Russia, and yet another Victoria, whose union with a Battenberg prince was to found the present Mountbatten clan. However, she suffered from melancholia and died at age thirty-five of what appears to have been a deliberate, grief-fueled exposure to the diphtheria germs that had carried away her youngest daughter. Middle child Helena struggled against obesity and drug addition but was to have lasting effect as Albert's literary executor. By contrast, her glittering and at times scandalous sister Louise, the most beautiful of the five siblings, escaped the claustrophobic stodginess of the European royal courts by marrying a handsome Scottish commoner, who became governor general of Canada, and eventually settled into artistic salon life as a respected sculptor. And as the baby of the royal brood of nine, rebelling only briefly to forge a short-lived marriage, Beatrice lived under the thumb of her mother as a kind of personal secretary until the queen's death.Principally researched at the houses and palaces of its five subjects in London, Scotland, Berlin, Darmstadt, and Ottawa-- and entertainingly written by an experienced biographer whose last book concerned Victoria's final days-- Victoria's Daughters closely examines a generation of royal women who were dominated by their mother, married off as much for political advantage as for love, and finally passed over entirely with the accession of their n0 brother Bertie to the throne. Packard provides valuable insights into their complex, oft-tragic lives as daughters of their time.