Vic Gatrell

Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, and a Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine Book of the Year. On the night of 23 February 1820, twenty-five impoverished craftsmen assembled in an obscure stable in Cato Street, London, with a plan to massacre the whole British cabinet at its monthly dinner. The Cato Street Conspiracy was the most sensational of all plots aimed at the British state since Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It ended in betrayal, arrest, and trial, and with five conspirators publicly hanged and decapitated for treason. Their failure proved the state's physical strength, and ended hopes of revolution for a century. Vic Gatrell explores this dramatic yet neglected event in unprecedented detail through spy reports, trial interrogations, letters, speeches, songs, maps, and images. Attending to the 'real lives' and habitats of the men, women, and children involved, he throws fresh light on the troubled and tragic world of Regency Britain, and on one of the most compelling and poignant episodes in British history.

Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, and a Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine Book of the Year. On the night of 23 February 1820, twenty-five impoverished craftsmen assembled in an obscure stable in Cato Street, London, with a plan to massacre the whole British cabinet at its monthly dinner. The Cato Street Conspiracy was the most sensational of all plots aimed at the British state since Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It ended in betrayal, arrest, and trial, and with five conspirators publicly hanged and decapitated for treason. Their failure proved the state's physical strength, and ended hopes of revolution for a century. Vic Gatrell explores this dramatic yet neglected event in unprecedented detail through spy reports, trial interrogations, letters, speeches, songs, maps, and images. Attending to the 'real lives' and habitats of the men, women, and children involved, he throws fresh light on the troubled and tragic world of Regency Britain, and on one of the most compelling and poignant episodes in British history.

Accompanying the first major exhibition of Thomas Rowlandson's work in North America for some 20 years, this volume reflects the growing emphasis on the social and political context of the satirical watercolours, drawings and prints of the 18th and 19th century and in doing so rescues Rowlandson from what co-author Vic Gatrell calls "the immense condescension of posterity". This book explores Rowlandson's unique perspective on Georgian society, and opens up the whole subject of Georgian leisure and social life and the crossing of class boundaries. An introduction by Patricia Phagan describes Rowlandson's position within a hierarchical society. Illustrated essays by Vic Gatrell and Amelia Rauser examine Rowlandson's view of social life and leisure in London and his political satires. The main catalogue is divided into six thematic sections: high society and political campaigning; encounters on the street; gatherings in clubs and taverns; art, dance, and the theatre; outdoor diversions; and romantic trysts, tangles, and attachments. Over 70 of Rowlandson's original watercolours and drawings, as well as prints and illustrated books drawn from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College as well as from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale Center for British Art, Lewis Walpole Library, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Vassar College Libraries, Archives and Special Collections are presented.