The Gin Lane Gazette

Adrian Teal, whose Baroque cartoons have graced the pages of History Today, was born in the wrong century. From his exile in the 21st he gazes back lovingly – and sometimes lecherously – on the 18th century. Hanoverian England provides rich pickings for this brilliant cartoonist-cum-satirist, with its cast of quacks, fops and courtesans set against a background of political intrigue, squalor, licentiousness and greed, all overseen by a mad monarch.

The Gin-Lane Gazette is beautifully produced, typeset in the crude but captivating fonts of the age, with the long S predominant, a wonderful frame for Teal’s skilful and often rude illustrations. Its compendium of bizarre stories are all based on actual historical events, ranging from the fighting parson of Vauxhall Gardens; Mary Tofts, who gave birth to 17 rabbits; the amputation of Josiah Wedgwood’s leg and an account of the ‘terrible conflagration at Mr Langdale’s Gin Distillery, Begun by Lord Gordon’s Anti-Papist Mob’.

In addition, we have the pleasure of the  ‘Votary of Venus’, a monthly celebration of the loveliest females of the age, including one Kitty Fisher, ‘perhaps the most admir’d & lov’d Nymph of the frail Sisterhood’. A pleasure indeed.

Paul Lay is the editor ofHistory Today