He must wed to keep his dream alive—her dream will die if he doesn’t choose her Lord Beaumont has only one love in his life—horses. Constantly upbraided by his overbearing mother, Beau’s desperate to break free from her control and prove himself by breeding a winning racehorse. Eliza Merry has secretly loved the reckless Viscount ever since she was a girl. Forced to restrain her unruly behaviour to attend the London season, the timid, tongue-tied lady she becomes is nothing like the lively girl she is inside. Compelled to seek a wife to realise his inheritance, to pay for his horses an ..read more

  A heartbroken widower. A downtrodden companion.  Their instant attraction offers hope for the future—if their secrets don’t destroy them first. Estate manager Peter Crowley has abandoned hope of ever loving again. No woman has touched his heart since the death of his wife. Now his life is centred on the beloved daughter he’s been forced to send away to school. Meg Harding knows nothing of love. The sole companion of a cantankerous old lady, she smiles in the face of adversity, but dreams of a better life. Thrown into conversation on the coach to Weymouth, Peter and Meg are dra ..read more

Blenheim Palace. Chatsworth House. Downton Abbey. The English landscape is littered with names that project a certain image of Englishness. Like those names I just listed, this image blends reality and fiction, and is maintained by its consistent manufacture on screen, in literature and as tourist attractions. To many inside this country, and beyond, the country house is a dominant feature in the cultural fabric of England. It’s up there with tea, rolling green hills and the Royal Family. How did this happen? In her new book, Stephanie Barczewski sets out to answer this question of ‘How the ..read more

Did Napoleon’s troops fire cannons at the pyramids of Egypt? And what was his army doing there? Those were questions provoked by the teaser trailer for the 2023 movie Napoleon. The second of these questions is answered by this new book by Jonathan North, Napoleon’s Invasion of Egypt. The book’s subtitle, ‘An Eyewitness History’, promises a wealth of firsthand accounts from the French invasion and occupation of a corner of North Africa. It delivers on that promise. This is a compelling account of that French adventure, told in the words of many who were there. Napoleon at Arcole from Th ..read more

The Newspaper by Thomas Rowlandson (1808) In Regency England news was passed by word of mouth, by private letter and in the newspapers. This meant newspapers were highly prized as a source of printed information. As today, a wide variety of newspapers were published. Most were distributed locally, although some found their way across the country and even abroad. Copies were passed from reader to reader, each of whom would avidly devour the contents even if it was a few months old. Newspapers are an excellent resource for historians and writers wanting to learn more about the late Geor ..read more

  Bonnets, bayonets and brilliant sunshine 9 September 2023—officially the hottest day of the year in the UK. It’s early and the sun’s already hot. But the dew is heavy on the grass outside the Holburne Museum in Bath, because it’s September and summer is fading into autumn. The annual Grand Regency Costumed Promenade—the formal opener to the annual Jane Austen Festival in Bath—is about to get underway. Passersby stop to gaze and snap the scene. Have they unexpectedly slipped backwards two hundred years to the age of elegance personified by characters from Jane Austen? Dozens of women in ..read more

This book sits on the very edge of the time period I usually write about, which is late Georgian through the Regency. William Schaw Lindsay was born in the middle of the Regency, but almost his entire adult life was during the reign of Queen Victoria. However, its appeal to me was the business angle. Early Victorian commercial life was not that different to that of the Regency period. Neither was life aboard a merchant ship, which William Schaw Lindsay experienced and described, during the 1830s. Victorian entrepreneur In 1833 William Schaw Lindsay was an unemployed 17-year-old living rough i ..read more

Athelhampton House Athelhampton House, in Dorset, was a 326-year-old pigsty at the start of the Regency period. The ground floor of the Tudor Great Hall, built in 1485, and the connected West Wing, had become home to pigs and poultry. And they had been that way for decades. Today Athelhampton is one of England’s finest Tudor mansions. It was pretty impressive when it was built, but a visitor in the Regency period would have seen it as a tired, rundown relic of a farmhouse. Little more than an ornate barn. Not that many people would have visited Athelhampton. Despite King George III re ..read more

On 9 November 1769, William Dighton was shot and killed in Halifax, Yorkshire. It was a planned assassination of a Supervisor of Excise—an official responsible for ensuring the collection of tax. Dighton was the victim of the Cragg Vale Gang—criminals who operated what was perhaps England’s largest clipping and coining operation. That is, they created counterfeit coins from gold shaved off genuine coins. Steve Hartley, author of The Yorkshire Coiners is a descendant of David Hartley, or ‘King David’, leader of the Cragg Vale Gang. He’s spent years researching the gang’s activities from variou ..read more

A Captain in the Navy from A book explaining the ranks and dignities of British Society by C Lamb (1809) You knew your place in Regency society. Whether you were born into a hovel or a grand house, you were likely to end your life in a similar situation. Changing your rank in a society governed by rigid rules of precedence was highly unusual. When it happened, it was normally through unconventional means. Unless you were an officer in the Royal Navy. Through Captain Wentworth, Jane Austen’s fictional hero in her novel Persuasion, we glimpse a long-established and accepted practice th ..read more