I'm a historian. But I’ve never been interested in Parliamentary debates, or important politicians. I’m much more interested in things like gender and entertainment. I always say that a lot more people have sex than become prime minister, so it makes more sense to study marriage than high politics! I like to learn about ordinary people, living their lives and loving their families, working and surviving, and trying to have a little fun along the way. I also love history of more fun and glamorous things—celebrities and scandals and spectacles and causes célèbres, hit plays, and best-selling novels. I have history degrees from Harvard and Yale and I’ve been publishing on nineteenth-century British history since 2000.
I wrote
Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain
This book is my favorite historian, Rohan McWilliam, writing about his favorite thing, London’s West End.
It’s about actors and singers and dancers and the audiences that flocked to their performances. It’s about the West End being a place of extremes, where cutting-edge ‘high culture’ lived next to accessible popular culture and sex work. McWilliam’s notion of the West End as the first ‘pleasure district’ was the first time I understood how opera houses and theaters and department stores and nightclubs and restaurants and street performers somehow all go together and add up to more than the sum of the parts.
It’s a scholarly achievement and an entertaining read.
How did the West End of London become the world's leading pleasure district? What is the source of its magnetic appeal? How did the centre of London become Theatreland? London's West End, 1800-1914 is the first ever history of the area which has enthralled millions. The reader will discover the growth of theatres, opera houses, galleries, restaurants, department stores, casinos, exhibition centres, night clubs, street life, and the sex industry. The area from the Strand to Oxford Street came to stand for sensation and vulgarity but also the promotion of high culture. The West End produced shows and fashions whose…
As some reactions to the first season of the television show Bridgerton have made clear, many people need to believe that Black people first arrived in Britain after World War II, and that Britain + the past = whites only. But it wasn’t so!
Black people have been British, and part of British history, for hundreds of years. I’m embarrassed how little I learned about Black Britons in studying British history in college and graduate school; this book has been a fantastic way to learn more.
Expanding upon the 2017 Radio 4 series 'Britain's Black Past', this
book presents those stories and analyses through the lens of a recovered past. Even
those who may be familiar with some of the materials will find much that they
had not previously known, and will be introduced to people, places, and stories
brought to light by new research. In a time of international racial unrest and
migration, it is important not to lose sight of similar situations that took
place in an earlier time. In chapters written by scholars, artists, and
independent researchers, readers will learn of an early…
Meet Lev Gleason, a real-life comics superhero! Gleason was a titan among Golden Age comics publishers who fought back against the censorship campaigns and paranoia of the Red Scare. After dropping out of Harvard to fight in World War I in France, Gleason moved to New York City and eventually…
I thought I had read enough about Queen Victoria to last a lifetime, but I was wrong! This amazing book offers a new perspective on Queen Victoria as “an Indian Maharani” as well as “British monarch,” and explores not just what India meant to the queen, but what the queen meant to Indians.
An entirely original account of Victoria's relationship with the Raj, which shows how India was central to the Victorian monarchy from as early as 1837
"A widely and deeply researched, elegantly written, and vital portrayal of [Queen Victoria's] place in colonial Indian affairs."-Journal of Modern History
In this engaging and controversial book, Miles Taylor shows how both Victoria and Albert were spellbound by India, and argues that the Queen was humanely, intelligently, and passionately involved with the country throughout her reign and not just in the last decades. Taylor also reveals the way in which Victoria's influence as empress contributed…
Since the start of the COVID pandemic I’ve been thinking a lot more about pandemics, epidemics, and public health.
This book was a great way to learn about cholera, one of the major epidemic diseases of the nineteenth century. And it’s a great read that combines a detective mystery with a mismatched buddy story (except instead of being two cops, the two main characters are a doctor and a priest).
A National Bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and an Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year
It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure-garbage removal, clean water, sewers-necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action-and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time.
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
I was looking for books on the history of emotions and this is one of the best!
Dixon demonstrates that the infamous British “stiff upper lip” is a lot more recent and a lot less timeless than most people think. I learned that until the late 1800s men could cry—in public no less—without anyone thinking less of them! Food for thought.
There is a persistent myth about the British: that we are a nation of stoics, with stiff upper lips, repressed emotions, and inactive lachrymal glands. Weeping Britannia - the first history of crying in Britain - comprehensively debunks this myth.
Far from being a persistent element in the 'national character', the notion of the British stiff upper lip was in fact the product of a relatively brief and militaristic period of our past, from about 1870 to 1945. In earlier times we were a nation of proficient, sometimes virtuosic moral weepers. To illustrate this perhaps surprising fact, Thomas Dixon charts…
Starting with the Queen Caroline Affair in 1820 and coming up to the start of World War I in 1914, Understanding the Victorians paints a vivid portrait of an era of dramatic change, combining broad survey with close analysis. It focuses on social and cultural topics over politics and economics and emphasizes class, gender, and racial and imperial positioning as constitutive of human relations. This third edition is fully updated with new chapters on emotion and on Britain’s relationship with Europe. Attention to the current concerns and priorities of professional historians enables readers to engage with today’s historical debates. With a detailed timeline and suggestions for further reading, this is the ideal companion for all students of the nineteenth century.
From the author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of two rival secret agents — one Confederate, the other Union — sent to Britain during the Civil War.
The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was ordered to acquire a clandestine fleet intended to break Lincoln’s blockade, sink Northern…
What were America's first prisons like? How did penal reformers, prison administrators, and politicians deal with the challenges of confining human beings in long-term captivity as punishment--what they saw as a humane intervention?
The Deviant Prison centers on one early prison: Eastern State Penitentiary. Built in Philadelphia, one of the…
