The Victorian Underworld in film and fiction is a place of twisting alleys, shrouded in fog as we "enter a world of gin spinners, sneaksmen and Covent Garden nuns, where bare-knuckled boxers slog it out for dozens of rounds, children are worth more dead than alive, and the Thames holds more bodies than the Ganges". This fascinating book takes the lid off the stereotype, showing where our ideas come from, based on real incidents such as the massacre of the Marr family on the notorious Ratcliffe Highway. The author's discussion includes speculation as to who the real murderer may have been, and his well-informed section on the Ripper murders also identifies a strong contender for the role. Bareknuckle fighting was illegal until boxing was gentrified by the Queensberry Rules, and the 19th century writer Hazlitt gave a famous account of a fight between The Gasman and his cannier opponent Bill Neale, accompanied by high-stakes betting. A best-selling Gothic Underworld writer was Harrison Ainsworth with novels such as his Jack Sheppard series, based on the short life of a real villain. Ainsworth popularised the idea of Flash, the special language used by criminals, satirised by the novelist Thackeray in Vanity Fair with expressions such as "Nuffle your clod" and "I'll bimbole the clicky in a snuffkin". Public controversy followed as to whether such books corrupted morals. Prostitution and pornography were also the subjects of moral panic and venereal disease was rampant, although some prostitutes made a profit out of the trade and married well. In the words of one, "we are pretty, we dress well, we can talk and insinuate ourselves into the hearts of men". Another abuse was the sale of dead bodies for dissection, a trade that occasionally led to murder, and in 1832 preventive legislation was passed. In 1849 Henry Mayhew began his revolutionary investigation into London's poor. 209pp, 15.9 x 23.5cm, black and white reproductions.

The silhouette as an art form reached the height of its popularity in the late 18th and 19th centuries, demanding considerable skill and dexterity from the artist, while the act of having a silhouette made was a performative process that enhanced the sitter's importance. The medium also raises interesting theoretical questions about the way we perceive negative space. Leading experts to shed light on the surprisingly complex historical, political, and social underpinnings of this ostensibly simple art form. This book is largely based on an exhibition of American silhouettes in the Washington National Gallery, which includes a well-known painting by the UK's 18th century master Joseph Wright of Derby, The Corinthian Maid, in which a young woman traces the silhouette of her sleeping lover on a nearby wall. In 1803 Charles Willson Peale installed the "physiognotrace" machine in his museum in Philadelphia, where a likeness could be mechanically created quickly and cheaply. Women and African Americans were often excluded from the privileged group of self-made men pushing the industry forward, but two of Peale's best cutters were disadvantaged people, with the mixed race Moses Williams specialising in studies of Native Americans, and Martha Ann Honeywell born without arms and manipulating the silhouette cutter with toes, mouth and a stump of an arm. Martha has a chapter to herself, including a discussion of her belief that the tiny patterns in the cosmos revealed the divine nature. A major silhouettist of the mid-19th century was Auguste Edouart, who specialised in full-length portrait silhouettes, a fashion he brought with him when he emigrated to America from France. Many of his silhouettes were sold as lithographs, generating a far bigger income, and among his sitters was John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. The exhibition also featured the work of four contemporary silhouette practitioners. Particularly striking are the cut-outs of Kara Walker depicting often brutal scenes from antebellum plantation life, exposing the inequity of power and exploitative relationships between master and slave. Kristi Malakoff, Kumi Yamashita, and Camille Utterback - all take the silhouette to unique and fascinating new heights. 182pp, reproductions on most double spreads.
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Celtic languages are now spoken only at the extreme edges of Europe, in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Brittany, but when Caesar conquered Gaul his subjects were described as Celts, while the ancient Greek historian Herodotus mentions Celts living on the Danube and in Spain. Modern scholars have had widely different opinions as to whether these peoples were in any way related, and there is no doubt that original Celtic literature was overlaid in the Middle Ages by mythologising. For instance, the 12th century Geoffrey of Monmouth "wallowed in nostalgia for a golden Celtic past" and extrapolated origin stories from the doubtful evidence of placenames. The author of this book applies DNA analysis to ancient artefacts, using the results to construct a logical pattern of settlement and interrelationship. Julius Caesar remarked on the similarity of culture between the Gauls and the island Celts, and the possible explanation that La Tene culture was responsible for the spread is too simplistic given the evidence of earlier place-names. The author considers that the Bell-Beaker community and a Proto-Indo-European language may hold the key, arguing that genetic evidence supports a Steppe homeland, together with archaeological evidence such as distinctive humanoid stelae or standing stones carved with arms, belt and footprints. When the people of the Steppes moved up the Danube in the Iron Age they introduced swords, horse gear and wagon burials to the developing Hallstatt warrior culture, and the author traces westward displacement through genetic analysis of skeletons and remains. The Roman world created separate Celtic provinces and Christianity continued the fragmentation, but the author's argument that the Celts once united Europe is persuasively developed. 240pp, 16.5 x 24.4cm, maps, black and white photos.

Fully illustrated and brilliantly researched, this book breaks new ground in bringing together the wide range of material culture that has supported rulers in their power from the 1st to the 16th centuries, from Prague and Seville to Palermo and the Oslo Fjord. The author draws on the work of historians, archaeologists and art historians to afford constant insights not only into the nature of power itself, but also into the ways rulers wished to represent themselves to the outside world. Power can be categorised within a framework of bureaucratic power, including legal and fiscal structures, personal power, covering the relationship of a ruler to his or her subjects including the military, and finally ideological power, the position of the ruler relative to belief systems. An interesting comparison can be made between Diocletian's early fourth century complex at Split in Croatia, a lavish retirement home with an impressive balcony that may have been used for imperial appearances, and the palace of Pedro the Cruel, ruler of Castile and Leon in the 14th century. External staircases, for instance at Saumur or the Doge's palace in Venice, became increasingly common ceremonial devices as the ruler ascended above his subjects. Cities were the location of the Roman triumphs, parades of military success, depicted for instance in a relief on the arch of Constantine showing the emperor in his quadriga or chariot. Holy places include not only Christian cathedrals and shrines but also mosques, for instance the Great Mosque in both Cordoba and Damascus. Monreale Cathedral in Sicily was founded in the 12th century by the ruler, answering directly to the Pope and decorated with mosaics relating to kingship, with the most prominent features a mosaic of Christ the Ruler and secondly the royal throne, comparable with what was probably a royal pew in Westminster Abbey. The author discusses the prehistoric Hill of Tara in Ireland and Scotland's Stone of Scone in their later functions in rituals of inauguration. Finally this comprehensive book covers tombs and mausoleums and their links with ideas of divine rulership. 458pp, black and white photos and a colour section.
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Deep Time, the 2.8 million years in which our earliest ancestors began to be toolmakers, is a period shrouded in mystery. It is still uncertain at what point hominins came on the scene, given that chimpanzees have also been shown to be capable to making tools. Controlled fire for cooking is a pointer, but how does an archaeologist distinguish between controlled and uncontrolled fires? Until the era of Darwin, it was believed that the world was created in 4004 BC, but late Victorian archaeologists started to push back the dates of the Neolithic by several millennia before settling down together, investing in agricultural plots, and collectively erecting massive ceremonial monuments to cement new communal identities. The author's personal experience of digging at early African sites illuminates a fascinating journey of understanding in which he takes the axe-head as the focus. His starting point is a green neolithic axe brought to him by a construction worker at the Devil's Quoits henge at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire. 5000 years old, the stone originated in the Lake District and was thus testimony to the movement of people and implements. He discusses the evidence for migration at several significant archaeological sites such as Creswell Crags in Nottinghamshire, a complex of caves with close similarities to the cave systems in the Dordogne. In the 1930s Gordon Childe theorised that the Neolithic was a period in which humans changed from hunters to farmers, and this was supported by the work of Kathleen Kenyon at Jericho in the 1950s, who proposed that hunter-gatherers had settled by a spring in Jericho around 10,000 BC, creating a "man-made tell (settlement mound)" including a sanctuary in a significant transitional stage towards domestication. The author's section on Stonehenge is particularly fascinating, covering several theories about how the blue stones got to Stonehenge from the Preseli mountains. Shipment from Milford Haven is now considered unlikely, and various overland routes are discussed including fording the Severn north of Gloucester. A thread throughout the book is the author's discussion of war and peace, whether aggression was innate in early societies and how this impacts on the future of our world. 2.9 x 19.8cm, 432pp, maps, diagrams, colour photos.

Sub-titled 'The Epic Story of the Brothers Who Led the Native American Resistance', this is a towering work of scholarship. Shawnee chief Tecumseh, a fierce warrior and a savvy politician, is remembered as the charismatic architect of the greatest pan-Indian Confederation in history. But his younger brother Tenskwatawa was just as vital to the success. Over time however his role has been forgotten and now, if remembered at all, he is remembered as a charlatan and a drunk. Peter Cozzens argues that while Tecumseh was the forward-facing diplomat, behind the scenes it was Tenskwatawa who unified multiple tribes with his deep understanding of Shawnee religion and culture. The brothers together led the resistance against the threat of violence and bloody expansion by white settlers, forging an alliance with the British army in the process, and becoming a last hope for Native Americans to preserve ways of life they had known for centuries. Cozzens paints in vivid detail the violent, lawless world of the Old Northwest, when settlers spilled over the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the War of Independence. He brings to life an often-overlooked episode in America's past and tells the untold story of the Shawnee brothers who retaliated against this threat, who enjoyed great popularity and posed a grave threat to colonial expansion. Many maps, colour photographs and a terrific text from the author of over 17 books on the Civil War and the American West. 357pp, chunky paperback.

Sub-titled 'The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War', this mammoth 932 page Cambridge University Press softback offers an unprecedented, panoramic history of the 'citizen armies' of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa. Drawing on new sources to reveal the true wartime experience of the ordinary rank and file, Jonathan Fennell fundamentally challenges our understanding of the war and of the relationship between conflict and socio-political change. He uncovers how fractures on the home front had profound implications for the performance of the British and Commonwealth armies, and he traces how soldiers' political beliefs, many of which emerged as a consequence of their combat experience, proved instrumental to the changes of the postwar era. 'Fennell draws on a wide literature and deep archival research to explore how the Commonwealth armies fought key battles and campaigns, but he never loses sight of the role of citizen soldiers and how they exerted agency in calamitous defeats and gritty victories.' - Tim Cook. The book forces us to rethink the way we view the armies of the British Empire and the modern British experience, wartime cohesion within participating societies and comradeship which in turn brought classes together in the post-war 'quiet revolution' that ended the Empire and redefined the Commonwealth. It is a hugely impressive and sweepingly ambitious book which brings together the military histories of all the British Commonwealth nations for the first time and asks vital questions about the relationship between wartime experience, society and politics in a trans-national way and the scale, size and significance of this book is nothing but staggering. Fennell is a Senior Lecturer of Defence Studies at King's College London. Tables, maps, list of abbreviations, 932pp in heavyweight softback.

England's second city has been a manufacturing powerhouse since Anglo-Saxon times, yet it is not a port and has no local mineral deposits of the kind that powered the Industrial Revolution. For its expansion into a major city, Birmingham relied on the talents and hard work of communities of migrants, first people from neighbouring villages and then in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the other side of the world. The borough rental, or list of tenants, from 1296 is an important document showing that two-thirds of the early workforce came from a ten-mile radius. The 19th century saw economic migration from Scotland and Ireland, and also the arrival of Russian Jews and Romanies escaping persecution. In the 20th century there were new communities of Yemenis, Chinese, Poles, Ukrainians, West Indians of the Windrush generation, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. This comprehensive history, published to mark the 850th anniversary of Henry II's grant of a market charter to the town in 1166, starts with recent developments in the archaeology of the medieval and Tudor periods. The "City of a Thousand Trades", to quote the 18th century politician Edmund Burke, emerged in the centuries after 1700 as it became a centre of industry and commerce. There were no guilds to create a closed shop, and the freedom allowed to Nonconformists in religion resulted in leaders such as John Bright and Joseph Chamberlain, radicals with a strong philanthropic drive. The first navigable canal was opened in 1766, giving the city access to overseas trade. There has been debate about the involvement of slaves in local industry, but their numbers were probably small. A high wage economy and opportunities for women and children attracted people to the town. Metalworking, from guns to jewellery to railway carriages, was a speciality, and the 20th century saw Birmingham's further development as Britain's motor city. 334pp, timeline, population figures, superb colour photos.
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Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. To date his Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies. The revered professor in this huge tome offers a magisterial take on the literature and poetry (excluding drama) written during one of the most consequential periods in world history and the rise of English Literature. In his classic survey he provides deep insight into the greatest of the 16th century writers, including: Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, William Tyndale, John Knox, Dr Johnson, Richard Hooker, Hugh Latimer, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, Thomas Cramner and many more. It is a wise and distinctive collection in which Lewis expounds on the profound impact prose and poetry have had on both British intellectual life and his own critical writing and thinking. As readers we obtain an invigorating overview from the Norman Conquest through the mid 17th century and you feel reading this that he has read every book he is writing about. He makes a principle of telling us which authors he thinks we will enjoy as he invites us to a literary feast and a realm of discovery and enjoyment. He writes 'with astonishing freshness on subjects which might be thought to be exhausted.' - the New Statesman. He even includes 'bad books'. Spenser's Faerie Queene draws on masque, pageants, tapestry, carvings, tournaments and the whole panoply of the court. Shakespeare's sonnets are the heart of the Golden Age, and for Lewis they tell a story of a young man's passion both for another man and also for a fickle woman. 744 pages.

An intelligent and perceptive word-picture of the lives of early criminals, written by a former police officer fascinated by historical stories of murder and justice. She studies nine historic crimes - and one familiar obsession. Murder truly was most foul in early modern Britain. Pamphlets littered the streets titillating audiences with exceedingly gruesome tales. Trials were gossipy events packed to the rafters with noisome spectators. Executions were public proceedings which promised not only gore, but desperate confessions and the grandest, most righteous human drama. The book unfolds true stories of murder, criminal investigation, early forensic techniques and high court trials pieced together from original research using coroner's inquests, court records, parish archives, letters, diaries and the cheap street pamphlets that proliferated to satisfy a voracious public. The historical laws and attitudes may strike us as exceptionally cruel, yet many aspects of public reaction to the criminal justice system have remained unchanged. We are still fascinated by narratives of murder and true crime, and trials continue to be grand public spectacles. Chapters include The Trial of Spencer Cowper, The Mutilation of Francis Marshall, The Bloody Midwife of Poplar and The Honourable Drowning of John Temple. 296pp.