Nicholas Orme’s A History of England’s Cathedrals is the first history of the life and activities of all English cathedrals, from Birmingham and Bury St Edmunds to Worcester and York Minster. England’s sixty-two Anglican and Catholic cathedrals are some of our most iconic buildings, attracting millions of worshippers and visitors every year. In this exclusive blogpost, Nicholas Orme takes us through a timeline of their foundation and development over the centuries. What attracts us about England’s cathedrals? Partly their rarity: there are only 42 Anglican and 19 Catholic ones compared with th ..read more

Eamon Duffy’s landmark account of the pre-Reformation church in England was first published in 1992. The Stripping of the Altars is a major revisionist account of the pre-Reformation church, which recreates how laypeople in fifteenth-century England experienced religion. Duffy shows that late medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but was a strong and vigorous tradition, and that the Reformation represented a violent rupture from a popular and theologically respectable religious system. In this extract, part of the 50 Years in 50 Books series for our 50th Anniversary, Duffy ..read more

The Gardens of the British Working Classes is an illustrated people’s history of gardening in Britain. Margaret Willes’s book celebrates the extraordinary feats of cultivation by the working class in Britain, even if the land they toiled, planted, and loved was not their own.  In this blogpost, part of the 50 Years in 50 Books series for our 50th Anniversary, Margaret Willes reconsiders The Gardens of the British Working Classes almost 10 years after it was first published. The idea of writing a history of working-class gardeners in Britain was suggested to me by my editor, Robert Bald ..read more

The Gentleman’s Daughter invokes women’s own accounts of their intimate and public lives to reveal what the life of an eighteenth-century British genteel woman was like. Drawing on these accounts, Amanda Vickery argues that in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the scope of female experience did not diminish—in fact, quite the reverse. In this extract, part of the 50 Years in 50 Books series for our 50th Anniversary, Amanda Vickery introduces the women (and their correspondence) who make up her book The Gentleman’s Daughter. This extract is taken from the Introduction The Gentlema ..read more

In The Georgians, Penelope J. Corfield explores every aspect of Georgian life – politics and empire, culture and society, love and violence, religion and science, industry and towns. In this blogpost, she takes us through some of the Georgian origins and innovations in familiar festive traditions. How were these traditions formed by their Christmases past? And how did they help form Christmases future? “Lincoln Priory Gate Georgian Housing” by expolight, CC BY-SA 2.0. Variety was the spice of Christmas festivities under the Georgians. There was no cultural pressure to conform to one ..read more

Tourists have reimagined and reinvented the landmarks, streets, and alleys of Dickens’s London for more than 150 years. Take, for example, A Muppet Christmas Carol, the 1992 reimagining of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring the famous characters in surroundings which may, at first, seem far removed from the muppets’ usual brand of technicolour sketch comedy. In this extract from Dickensland, Lee Jackson explains how the filmmakers recreate a fictionalised version of Dickensian London to connect with and delight their contemporary audiences. “The Muppet Christmas Carol” by Magnus D,  ..read more

2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s first folio, without which many of his works would have been lost. This preservation was significant, particularly to those creatives who have become enmeshed with his legacy – notably, the Bloomsbury Group, whose members including Virginia Woolf frequently expressed how inseparable their art is from Shakespeare’s. Nestled in Bedford Square in the heart of Bloomsbury, Yale University Press is also celebrating. It’s our 50th year of publishing in London. So, there is no better time to explore the history of artistic lives wove ..read more

Armistice Day was declared on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918. In Peace at Last, author Guy Cuthbertson, associate professor at Liverpool Hope University, focuses solely on the day itself, examining how the people of Britain, and the wider world, reacted to the news of peace. Starting at midnight and continuing to the evening’s celebrations, his portrait of this extraordinary day shows how the people on the street, as well as soldiers and prominent figures like D.H. Lawrence and Lloyd George, experienced a strange, singular day of great joy, relief a ..read more

5 November, 1605: A plot to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder is thwarted when explosives expert Guy Fawkes is caught red-handed in Parliament’s basement. Robert Catesby is the mastermind who, along with his trusted cast of conspirators, sought to assassinate King James during the opening of Parliament. This story of gunpowder, treason and plot is consecrated in British history, marked each year with the burning of bonfires, fireworks and effigies. But how did this play out at the time? How did people respond? And what became of the conspirators and others who were implicated? Learn mo ..read more

In his groundbreaking new history, Robert Gildea interviews the miners and their families who fought to defend themselves against Thatcher’s goverment. Exploring mining communities from South Wales to the Midlands, Yorkshire, County Durham, and Fife, Gildea shows how the miners and their families organized to protect themselves, and how a network of activists mobilized to support them. In this blogpost, part of the 50 Years in 50 Books series for our 50th Anniversary, Robert Gildea shares how he collaborated with miners and their families to record their oral histories and tell their storie ..read more