Search results for ""Vic Gatrell" "The First Bohemians""

Book SynopsisVic Gatrell's last book, City of Laughter won both the Wolfson Prize for History and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize; his The Hanging Tree won the Whitfield Prize of the Royal Historical Society. He is a Life Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge.Trade ReviewAn irresistible history, fizzing with life -- Philip Pullman * Observer BOOKS OF THE YEAR *Gatrell's love for this dangerous but brilliant age is matched by his expert knowledge of its culture, both high and low -- Dan Jones * Daily Telegraph HISTORIES OF THE YEAR *A rich and surprising book ... a sumptuous Christmas treat -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times HISTORY BOOKS OF THE YEAR *Could be bought for its illustrations alone -- Francis Wilson * Times Literary Supplement BOOKS OF THE YEAR *Compelling ... scholarly and bawdy -- Tristram Hunt * Mail on Sunday BOOKS OF THE YEAR *A gorgeously engrossing book, bracingly sceptical of received pieties ... combines scholarship with originality, colour and imagination to a rare degree ... Boozy, arty and sexually charged, Covent Garden in the mid-1700s surges spectacularly into life in this engrossing history ... As well as recording Covent Garden's buzz and buoyancy, Gatrell aims to alter how we think about 18th-century painting. Our automatic association of it with Reynolds's or Gainsborough's flattering society portraits or with nymph-ridden neoclassical allegories is, he thinks, a mistake, and he quotes approvingly Johnson's declaration that he would rather see a portrait of a dog he knew than all the allegorical paintings in the world. Against Reynolds and his Royal Academicians Gatrell pits the realists, who drew or painted the street life of workaday Londoners ... They provide the most memorable images in Gatrell's book, not just familiar masterpieces such as Hogarth's glowingly wholesome Shrimp Girl, but sketches he has retrieved from obscurity - an exhausted washerwoman slumped in a chair, a ballet dancer lying flat on a table to ease her legs, a carter leaning over the side of his cart to kiss his sweetheart -- John Carey * Sunday Times *Welcome to Vic Gatrell's London ... [His] brilliant account ... brings it all to life: the site of Dirty Lane where passers-by defecated; the stench of smoke, horses, humans, dead fish and offal; and the sound of "the melodious clank of marrow bone and cleaver" with which the Covent Garden butchers welcomed George I's coronation in 1714 ... Gatrell's scholarly career has been a sustained attempt to recapture Georgian London from Victorian prudery ... In its sweep of visual arts, social history, literary criticism and bawdy culture [The First Bohemians] provides a superb chronicle of a golden age of authentic, urban creativity -- Tristram Hunt * Sunday Times *Gatrell's book does [his subject] justice in all the right ways. It is beautifully produced - from the sumptuous, almost three-dimensional dust jacket to the more than 200 illustrations sprinkled liberally throughout the text ... The great joy of the book is how effortlessly and continuously his narrative and pictures illuminate one another ... It is a tour de force of social and pictorial history that few living historians could match ... a new kind of deeply social and more democratic history of artistic production ... Ultimately, though it rests on serious scholarship, The First Bohemians is ... a relaxed, confident and triumphantly successful re-creation of a fascinating world of male companionship, drunkenness, poverty, sex and art -- Faramerz Dabhoiwala * Guardian *Colourful ... entertaining ... Gatrell does a fine job of tracing how the scurrilous behaviour of London's residents often inspired some of the finest works of art and literature ... the richness of detail makes The First Bohemians a pleasure to read ... his enthusiasm feels infectious * Economist *Gatrell's richly documented (and wonderfully illustrated) study ... [shows] how an unconventional way of looking at the world - vivid, unpretentious and often richly comic - eventually found its way to the heart of our culture, and we are richer for it ... This book is, at its heart, more concerned with the history of art, and what might be called the history of public taste, than with social history. Gatrell deftly sketches the long-running conflict between two different approaches to painting in 18th-century England: the "high" school of the Royal Academicians, with its emphasis on noble history paintings, mythical scenes and grand Italianate landscapes, and the "low" school of Hogarth and his admirers, which drew on the Dutch tradition of portraying ordinary life in vivid domestic detail ... And while the "low" school never won the contest for prestige, it did produce a transformation of taste, teaching the English to take pleasure in local landscapes and the portrayal of simple human pleasures. In what is perhaps the finest section of the book, Gatrell shows how the great comic artist Thomas Rowlandson played a key part in this change -- Noel Malcolm * Sunday Telegraph *Gatrell argues persuasively that it was their proximity to this mayhem that made the artists and writers in 18th century Covent Garden so vivid and exciting ... [He] proves a dab hand at recreating the blazing furnace of 18th century Covent Garden ... Gatrell is a natural iconoclast -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *Gatrell is terrific company. He praises 18th-century writing for propelling us 'niftily to the point' and his own his prose performs the same trick ... The First Bohemians is generously, often ingeniously, illustrated and Gatrell's pithy commentary on the prints and pictures can be scathing ... Pleasure, particularly through misbehaviour, is one of Gatrell's great interests. His last book, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in 18th-Century London ... was generally proclaimed a masterpiece, and in The First Bohemians - also destined to be loaded with prizes - he returns to the 'importance', 'necessity' and 'truthtelling' of satire, the 18th century's mental health check -- Francis Wilson * New Statesman *[A] marvellous book ... exhilarating, richly illustrated and witty * Financial Times *This is dense, ripely enjoyable social history -- Peter Conrad * Observer *Gatrell's evocation of taverns, bagnios and alleys is compelling. He has a lovely eye for shadows in paintings and how they indicate time of day; he has a lively eye for sympathies in sketches. Butchers, bawds, rakes, tradesmen, sailors, fruit-sellers, fruit-buyers, tailors, cooks, pie-men, aristocrats, oilmen, coalmen, stay-makers, bookbinders, button-sellers and dozens of others are particularised fleetingly from crowds. Exact topography makes it clear how jostle and juxtaposition brought all sorts of people together. Decent dealings get an occasional look-in; the possibility of clean, calm and sunny moments is conceded. ... for all its zest for sensual assault, [The First Bohemians] engages with the unwashed great in illuminating scholarship -- Clare Brant * Times Higher Education *

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Book SynopsisThe Cato Street Conspiracy was the most sensational of all plots aimed at the British state since the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. This book tells this dramatic but neglected story with cinematic vividness, episodic range, and a tragic denouement that undermines our romantic fantasies about Regency England.Trade Review'In his gripping new book, Vic Gatrell rescues the Cato Street conspirators from “the enormous condescension of posterity”, and reconstructs in enthralling detail the world of low taverns, debtors' prisons and radical extremism from which they came. This is a brilliantly written masterpiece that triumphantly succeeds in restoring humanity and dignity to its subjects.' Richard J. Evans, author of The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815–1914'Conspiracy on Cato Street explores in gripping detail the plot of February 1820 to assassinate the whole cabinet and start a revolution the year after the Peterloo massacre. Gatrell sympathises as much as possible with the desperation the doomed plotters felt that drove them to such a decision. The plot was the most murderous for over two centuries - since the gunpowder plot - and here finds its perfect historian.' Andrew Roberts, Books of the Year, BBC History Magazine'A finely researched account' Best 50 Books of 2022, Daily Telegraph'Enriched by Gatrell's observation that “the inequalities and deprivations that moved the conspirators, and the privileged interests and powers that contained them, still operate,” this is a fine-grained study of political extremism in action.' Publishers Weekly'Gatrell's intense study of the men's lives - and what brought them to believe that violently overthrowing the government could solve their problems - is forensic and vivid in its detail.' Stephen Bates, BBC History Magazine'This is micro-history at its richest and its most penetrating. More than giving us a social history in a few lives, Gatrell has told us a human story with the depth of a novel.' D. H. Robinson, The Critic'an engrossing study.' Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Times'a panoramic and thrilling study of an overlooked part of British history.' Catherine Ostler, Daily Telegraph'Gatrell asks all the right questions of his subject, and his answers are sound and illuminating.' David Keymer, Library Journal [starred review]'Terrific … the richest account of the Cato Street conspiracy ever written.' Marcus Nevitt, The Spectator'Gatrell writes passionately as a radical historian championing the underdog and castigating inequality.' William Anthony Hay, The Wall Street Journal'… (a) gripping account.' History Today'There is no better guide to metropolitan high and low life than Gatrell … [In] an enthralling classic of London history, [he] eschews what he sees as the stifling pieties of labour history in favour of individual character and lived detail, professing a Dickensian empathy for the 'muddled attitudes, slogans and resentments' of ordinary Londoners … Cato Street is underdog history at its purest.' Robert Poole, Times Literary Supplement'Vic Gatrell tells this sorry story with zest and sympathy … Conspiracy on Cato Street follows the trail of his Hanging Tree (1994), City of Laughter (2006) and The First Bohemians (2013) in its capturing of Regency London in all its gaiety, violence, sexual sprawl and, above all, searing poverty. His trigger finger trembles with passion as he takes aim at the romantic curricles-and-crinolines view of the period … Gatrell says at the beginning of his salutary and often startling account that 'a book of this kind cannot help speaking to the present.' Ferdinand Mount, London Review of Books'Vic Gatrell is that rarest of people; an academic historian steeped in the archives who can write the most beautiful prose. Conspiracy on Cato Street brings his trademark erudition and style to bear … [in this] wonderful book.' Jason McElligott, Irish TimesTable of ContentsPart I. The simple tale: 1. The Cato Street conspiracy: what happened; 2. Arrests and reactions; Part II. Taking its measure: 3. Interpreting the conspiracy; 4. What they were up against; 5. What they believed; 6. Fantasy, myth, and song; 7. Rebellion's habitats; Part III. Thistlewood: his story: 8. A terrorist in the making: 1774-1816; 9. The Spa Fields insurrection: 1816-17; 10. Thistlewood unhinged: 1818-19; 11. Peterloo in London: 1819-20; 12. Edwards the spy: 1819-20; Part IV. Ordinary Britons: 13. Conspirators and others; 14. Wives, marriages, children; 15. Men of colour: Wedderburn and Davidson; Part V. Executions: 16. Trials and verdicts; 17. May Day at Newgate; 18. Epilogue: Géricault goes to Cato Street; Historiographical note; The trial reports.

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