In this masterly biography, F.S.L. Lyons tackles the life and times of one of the greatest Irish statesmen of modern times. One of modern Irish biography's great triumphs, Charles Stewart Parnell has never been approached or surpassed. Charles Stewart Parnell, an enigmatic, icy aristocrat, was the unlikely and unchallenged leader of Irish nationalism from the mid-1870s, in its early heroic phase. Without him, Home Rule would not have become the formidable cause that it was. Daniel O'Connel...

When this book was originally published in 1960 no full-length study of the Parnell ‘split’ had been made, despite it being such a landmark in Irish history. The book treats the eleven months between the verdict on the O’Shea divorce case the death of Parnell as a dramatic unity. This was the first modern work to provide a connected account of such neglected episodes as the ‘Boulogne negotiations’ and Parnell’s final campaign in Ireland. The crisis was a crisis for English liberalism as we...

A historian reveals the grittier side of Regency England, far from the country houses and costume balls of high society.Often upheld as a period of elegance with many achievements in the fine arts and architecture, the Regency era also encompassed a time of great social, political, and economic upheaval. In this insightful social history, the emphasis is on the lives of those not born into nobility—what it was like for the poor, and what challenges they faced....

A brilliant true crime account of the assassinations that altered the course of Irish history from the "compulsively readable" writer ( The Guardian).One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles...

Dark and foggy Victorian streets, the murderous madman, the arsenic-laced evening meal - we all think we know the realities of Victorian crime. Adrian Gray's thrilling book recounts the classic murders, by knife and poison, but it also covers much more, taking the reader into less familiar parts of Victorian life, uncovering the wicked, the vengeful, the foolish and the hopeless amongst the criminal world of the nineteenth century. Here you will encounter the women who sol...

'A revealing, insightful and gripping biography of one of the most extraordinary people ever to lead a British political party' ObserverThe story of Jeremy Thorpe's rapid rise and spectacular fall from grace is one of the most remarkable in British politics. When he became leader of the Liberal Party in 1967 at the age of just thirty-seven, he seemed destined for truly great things. But as his star steadily rose so his nemesis drew ever nearer: a time-bomb...

Daniel O'Connell, often referred to as The Liberator, was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century. One of the most remarkable historical figures in Irish history, he campaigned for Catholic Emancipation, including the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament, and repeal of the Act of Union which combined Great Britain and Ireland. Famous in his day as the most feared lawyer in Ireland, O'Connell tormented judges, terrorised opposing barristers, and w...

Bethlem Hospital is the oldest mental institution in the world, to many famously known as ' Bedlam': a chaotic madhouse that brutalised its patients. Paul Chambers explores the 800-year history of Bethlem and reveals fascinating details of its ambivalent relationship with London and its inhabitants, the life and times of the hospital's more famous patients, and the rise of a powerful reform movement to tackle the institution's notorious policies. Here the whole st...

'The clearest, most accurate, and most up-to-date account of the Ripper murders, by one of Britain's greatest and most respected experts on the "autumn of terror" in Victorian London.'William D. Rubenstein, Professor of Modern History, University of Wales, AberystwythEngland in the 1880s was a society in transition, shedding the skin of Victorianism and moving towards a more modern age. Promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police ineffic...

A unique, in-depth view of Victorian London during the record-breaking summer of 1858, when residents both famous and now-forgotten endured “The Great Stink” togetherWhile 1858 in London may have been noteworthy for its broiling summer months and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, the year is otherwise little remembered. And yet, historian Rosemary Ashton reveals in this compelling microhistory, 1858 was marked by significant, if unrecognized, tu...

Days of Voilence... The 1923 police strike in Melbourne... The police strike of 1923 resulted in a weekend orgy of destruction. Three persons were killed and property valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds destroyed in the Melbourne central business district. The strike resulted from a breakdown in communication between an inept Chief Commissioner and a manipulative constable determined to be as vindictive as possible. It sucked in the Government and the Police Association. Its most immedi...

Charles Stewart Parnell is the most enigmatic figure in Irish history. An Anglo-Irish landlord from a distinguished Wicklow family, he became the most unlikely leader of Irish nationalism imaginable. He hated the colour green. He was not a dynamic speaker. He was cold and aloof and lacked the popular touch. None the less, from the late 1870s until his fall and death in 1891, he held the whole of Ireland spellbound. He established Home Rule for Ireland – previously a taboo subject in Britis...