Judith Flanders

Few of us think much of the alphabet and its familiar sing-song order once we've learned it as children. And yet the order of the alphabet, that simple knowledge that we take for granted, plays far more of a role in our lives than we usually consider. From the school register to the telephone book, from dictionaries and encyclopaedias to...

There is no aspect of Victorian death that does not make it into Judith Flanders's latest investigation into 19th-century life' - The Sunday Times 'Flanders writes with sharp intelligence and first-class scholarly attention to detail' - The Telegraph In Rites of Passage, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders deconstructs the intricate, fascinating, and occasionally - to modern eyes - bizarre customs that...

The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented transformation, and nowhere was this more apparent than on the streets of London. In only a few decades, London grew from a Regency town to the biggest city the world had ever seen, with more than 6.5 million people and railways, street-lighting and new buildings at every turn. Charles Dickens obsessively walked...