At 7:15pm on Sunday August 29th 1819, the village of Ashow, Warwickshire was shook to its core by a young girl's scream at Dial House Farm. Thirteen-year-old Mary Dormer found her mother, Sarah Dormer's, slain body lying in Sarah's bedroom.Sarah's 21-year-old maidservant, Ms Ann Heytrey was charged, arrested, and imprisoned at the County Town Gaol at Warwick, where she would remain until the following year when she was tried at Warwick Assizes for Sarah's murder. After being found ...

The London of Jack the Ripper: Then and Now' is a photographic journey through the London of Jack the Ripper as it was when he stalked the mean streets and alleyways of the Capital.Robert Clack and Philip Hutchinson take the reader on a step-by-step tour of the crime scenes, giving a detailed history of the victims, the crimes and the police investigation.Using many previously unpublished photographs and illustrations, the authors put the reader on the very streets that Jack walked, s...

“A vivid, entertaining and often comical portrait of life at court.” —Wall Street Journal“Compelling. . . . The rhythm of court life at Windsor or Balmoral is the backdrop to a rich human drama, a story of people existing in uneasy intimacy with the royal family.” — Daily Telegraph (London)Based on the letters and diaries of six members of Queen Victoria's household, Serving Victoria offers unique insight into the queen and her court. Seen through the eyes of her servants—i...

This biography of the mysterious Maria Branwell "portrays a woman of intelligence, social savvy, wit and strength as well as a love for books . . . engrossing" ( Historical Novel Society).They were from different lands, different classes, different worlds almost. The chances of Cornish gentlewoman Maria Branwell even meeting the poor Irish curate Patrick Brontë in Regency England, let alone falling passionately in love, were remote. Yet M...

For fans of Downton Abbey comes an immersive historical epic about a lavish English manor and a dynasty of rich and powerful women who ruled the estate over three centuries of misbehavior, scandal, intrigue, and passion.Five miles from Windsor Castle, home of the royal family, sits the Cliveden estate. Overlooking the Thames, the mansion is flanked by two wings and surrounded by lavish gardens. Throughout its storied history, Cliveden has been a setting fo...

From the crowded tenements of Edinburgh to the Female Factory nestling in the shadow of Mt Wellington, dozens of Scottish women convicts were exiled to Van Diemen's Land with their young children. This is a rich and evocative account of the lives of women at the bottom of society two hundred years ago. 'Her superb research and sympathetic reconstructions of nineteenth-century Scotland and Australia bring to life a long-forgotten but fascinating group of women.' - Siân Rees, author of The F...

The fascinating story of the daughter of First Fleet convicts who overcame her humble origins to become the mistress of the grandest home in colonial Sydney.'An astonishing story of lust and love in early colonial Australia, shocking, entrancing and utterly enthralling.' - Sue Williams, author of Elizabeth and ElizabethBorn on Norfolk Island to First Fleet convicts, Mary Ann was destined to become a farmer's wife. Instead, at the age of fou...

A vivid and graphic survey of the casualties of childhood during the Victorian Era through detailed and never-before-seen firsthand accounts.Take a fascinating journey into the real lives of Victorian children—how they lived, worked, played, and far too often, died before reaching adulthood. These true accounts, many of which had been hidden for more than a century, reveal the hardship and cruel conditions endured by young people living through the tumult of the In...

Many thousands of abandoned children were treated as free labour in late 19th century Australia, yet their stories have been hidden until now, even to their descendants. Lucy Frost's painstaking research has uncovered what really happened to the convict orphans.Longlisted for the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Awards Premier's Prize for Non-fictionLonglisted for the 2024 Green Family Tasmanian History AwardAll families have...

On 16 November 2010, the long-awaited engagement of HRH Prince William to Miss Catherine Middleton was formally announced, with a London wedding taking place on April 2011. Andrew Morton, the leading royal biographer famous the world over for his million-copy bestselling, authorized biography of Diana, Princess of Wales, has written a full-length biography of William and his new bride Kate. Morton has followed the prince's life since birth and has unrivalled insight into the royal family.

With "a level of intimacy and more than a few emotional peaks," a biography of Queen Elizabeth, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Kingdom ( Publishers Weekly).Elizabeth of York was not born to be Queen. She came into the world on April 21st, 1926, the equivalent of the modern Princess Beatrice, first-born daughter of the Duke of York, destined to flutter on the royal fringe. So while Lilibet was brought up with almost relig...

Marking the centenary of female suffrage, this definitive history charts women's fight for the vote through the lives of those who took part, in a timely celebration of an extraordinary struggleAn Observer Pick of 2018A Telegraph Book of 2018A New Statesman Book of 2018Between the death of Queen Victoria and the outbreak of the First World War, while the patriarchs o...