A TIMES AND SUNDAY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Wonderfully entertaining, comprehensive and astute.' The Times
'Sweeping and ambitious… Sharpe is a humane and clear-eyed guide to a series of intractable and timely questions.' Observer
'A magisterial book… The outlaw's song has surely never been better rendered.' Times Literary Supplement
From the tragic tale of Mary Clifford, whose death at the hands of her employer scandalised Georgian London, to an account of the violent activities of Victorian Manchester's scuttling gangs, via a character portrait of the duel-obsessed Cavalier Sir John Reresby, A Fiery & Furious People explores the brutal underside of our national life in all its variety. And as it considers the litany of assaults, murders and riots that pepper our history, it also traces the subtle shifts that have taken place both in the nature of…
