Georgian History

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia.

In the latest volume of his celebrated series of Time Traveller's Guides, Ian Mortimer turns to what is arguably the most loved period in British history: the Regency (a.k.a. Georgian England). Bookended by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the death of George IV in 1830, this is the age of Jane Austen and the Romantic poets, the paintings of Constable and the gardens of Repton, the sartorial elegance of Brummell and the poetic licence of Byron, Britain's military triumphs at Trafalgar and Waterloo and the threat of revolution and the Peterloo massacre.

In this fascinating and original book, a team of leading historians and archaeologists reconsiders every aspect of the battle. They examine the latest historical and archaeological evidence, question every assumption, and rewrite the story of the campaign in vivid detail. This is the first time that such a distinguished team of experts has focused on a single British battle. The result is a seminal study of the subject, and it is a landmark publication of battlefield archaeology.

The breathtaking latest installment in Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard's mega-best-selling Killing series transports listeners to the most important era in our nation's history, the Revolutionary War. Told through the eyes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Great Britain's King George III, Killing England chronicles the path to independence in gripping detail, taking the listener from the battlefields of America to the royal courts of Europe.

The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods. The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines—on punishment of death—and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.

In Behind the Throne, historian Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the reality of five centuries of life at the English court, taking the listener on a remarkable journey from one Queen Elizabeth to another and exploring life as it was lived by clerks and courtiers and clowns and crowned heads: the power struggles and petty rivalries, the tension between duty and desire, the practicalities of cooking dinner for thousands and of ensuring the king always won when he played a game of tennis.

Anne Lister was extraordinary. Fearless, charismatic, and determined to explore her lesbian sexuality, she forged her own path in a society that had no language to define her. She was a landowner, an industrialist, and a prolific diarist whose output has secured her legacy as one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century. Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister follows Anne from her crumbling ancestral home in Yorkshire to the glittering courts of Denmark as she resolves to put past heartbreak behind her and find herself a wife.

In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the era dictated, a clever woman—if there were such a thing—would never make a good wife. But a circle of women called the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: Coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society. In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the lives of these pioneering women.

Spanning the end of the Regency, Ackroyd takes listeners from the accession of the profligate George IV, whose government was steered by Lord Liverpool, whose face was set against reform, to the "Sailor King" William IV, whose reign saw the modernization of the political system and the abolition of slavery. But it was the accession of Queen Victoria, at only 18 years old, that sparked an era of enormous innovation. Technological progress - from steam railways to the first telegram - swept the nation, and the finest inventions were showcased at the first Great Exhibition in 1851.

For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike quickly turned into a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses in smoking ruins. By the time British troops had put down the rebels, more than a thousand Jamaicans lay dead from summary executions and extrajudicial murder. While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic.

The Battle of Culloden in 1746 has gone down in history as the last major battle fought on British soil: a vicious confrontation between the English Royal Army and the Scottish forces supporting the Stuart claim to the throne. But this wasn't just a conflict between the Scots and the English: The battle was also part of a much larger campaign to protect the British Isles from the growing threat of a French invasion.

Could you successfully be a Georgian? Find yourself immersed in the pivotal world of Georgian England, exciting times to live in. Everything was booming—the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the nascent Empire—in an era inhabited by Mary Shelley, the Romantic poets, and their contemporaries. Find everything you need to know in order to survive as a time traveler from today, undetected among the ordinary people: how to dress, behave yourself in public, earn a living, and find somewhere to live.

Dr Gregory Fremont-Barnes presents a detailed overview of the Forty-five Rebellion, dispelling the myths that have grown up around battles like Culloden and the figures of the Highlanders. Fremont-Barnes examines this key turning point in British history, analysing the dynastic struggle of two royal houses, the Rebellion’s manoeuvres and battles and the tragic aftermath for the Highlands.

In Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution, Don N. Hagist brings life to these soldiers, describing the training, experiences, and outcomes of British soldiers who fought during the Revolution. Drawing on thousands of military records and other primary sources in British, American, and Canadian archives, and the writings of dozens of officers and soldiers, Noble Volunteers shows how a peacetime army responded to the onset of war, how professional soldiers adapted quickly and effectively to become tactically dominant, and more.

London, 1772: a young artist called Thomas Rowlandson is making his way through the grimy backstreets of the capital, on his way to begin his studies at the Royal Academy Schools. Within a few years, James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank would join him in Piccadilly, turning satire into an artform, taking on the British establishment, and forever changing the way we view power. Set against a backdrop of royal madness, political intrigue, the birth of modern celebrity, French revolution, American independence and the Napoleonic Wars, UPROAR! follows the satirists as they lampoon those in power.

Sarah Churchill, first Duchess of Marlborough, was the glamorous and controversial subject of hundreds of satires, newspaper articles and publications both during her lifetime and after her death. This biography brings Sarah Churchill's own voice, passionate and intelligent, back to life and casts a critical eye over images of the Duchess handed down through art, history and literature. Here is an unforgettable portrait of a woman who cared intensely about how we would remember her.

When Campbell & Clark, Scottish merchants based in India, dispatched an Indian ship hurriedly renamed the Sydney Cove to the colony of NSW in 1797, they were hoping to make their fortune. The ship's 'speculative' cargo included all kinds of products to entice the new colony's inhabitants, including 7,000 gallons of rum intended to be sold to the Rum Corp. But when the ship went down north of Van Diemen's Land, cargo master William Campbell and 16 other crew members decided to walk the 600 miles to Sydney Town to get help and rescue crew and cargo.

Lady Victoria Aston has everything she could want: an older sister happily wed, the future of her family estate secure, and ample opportunity to while her time away in the fields around her home. But now Vicky must marry - or find herself and her family destitute. Armed only with the wisdom she has gained from her beloved novels by Jane Austen, she enters society’s treacherous season.

Like its popular and acclaimed predecessor, Restoration London, this book is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of the everyday life of our ancestors, so often ignored in more conventional history books.

Immerse yourself in the vanished world inhabited by Jane Austen's contemporaries. Packed with detail and anecdotes, this is an intimate exploration of how the middle and upper classes lived from 1775, the year of Austen's birth, to the coronation of George IV in 1820. Sue Wilkes skillfully conjures up all aspects of daily life within the period, drawing on contemporary diaries, illustrations, letters, novels, travel literature, and archives.