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 violence and in people's
attitudes to it. Why was it, for example, that wife-beating could at
once be simultaneously legal and so frowned upon that persistent
offenders might well end up being ducked in the village pond? When did
the serial killer first make an appearance in the annals of English
crime? How could football be regarded at one moment as a raucous pastime
that should be banned, and the next as a respectable sport that should
be encouraged? What gave rise to particular types of violent criminal -
medieval outlaws, Georgian highwaymen, Victorian garroters - and what
made them dwindle and then vanish?
Throughout, Professor James Sharpe draws on an astonishingly wide range
of material - court records and murder pamphlets, popular ballads and
novels, sermons and films - to paint vivid pictures of the nation's
criminals and criminal system from medieval times to the present day. He
gives a strong sense of what it was like to be caught up in, say, a
street brawl in medieval Oxford or a battle during the English Civil
War. And he also seeks to answer perhaps the most fascinating and
fundamental question of all: is a country that has experienced not only
constant aggression on an individual scale but also the Peasants'
Revolt, the Gordon Riots, the Poll Tax protests and the urban unrest of
summer 2011 naturally prone to violence or are we, in fact, gradually
becoming a gentler nation?
'Deeply researched, thoughtfully considered and vividly written ...
Read it.' History Today
'Sharpe's eye for detail ensures that the shock value never dwindles.'
Mail on Sunday ****
'Deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking ... genuinely hard to put
down.' BBC History Magazine
