Victorian

Stripping Down the Buttoned Up

An examination of the ‘fleeting, fine-grained intimacies’ of letters, diaries and memoirs produces a witty and scholarly account of Victorian attitudes to the body.

The Science of the Supernatural

Many assumptions and values separate us from the Victorians, but belief in the supernatural is not one of them, argues Simone Natale. 

Richard Thornton, 1776-1865: A Victorian Millionaire

Although unmentioned in modern reference books and works of economic history, Thornton was one of the greatest commercial figures of the day and, writes W.G. Hoskins, when he died, left “by far the largest fortune of the century to that date.”

Lord Randolph Churchill

Robert Rhodes James profiles the man rivalled only by Gladstone as the most able politician and Parliamentarian of his time.

The Ballot Act of 1872

A secret ballot at general elections had been a reformers’ demand since the seventeenth century. It was achieved two hundred years later, writes Robert Woodall, after much experience of bribery.

Bank Holidays - And Much Else

Eynon Smart describes how, during the second half of the nineteenth century, few politicians had a wider range of personal accomplishments than John Lubbock, the author of the Bank Holidays Bill.