Alice Loxton on Georgian Britain
Friday 14th April 2023
Topping & Company Booksellers of Bath, York Street, Bath, Somerset BA1 1NG
7pm
7.30pm
A brilliant new history of Georgian Britain through the eyes of the artists who immortalised it, by one of the UK's most exciting young historians.
London, 1772: a young artist called Thomas Rowlandson is making his way through the grimy backstreets of the capital, on his way to begin his studies at the Royal Academy Schools. Within a few years, James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank would join him in Piccadilly, turning satire into an artform, taking on the British establishment, and forever changing the way we view power.
Set against a backdrop of royal madness, political intrigue, the birth of modern celebrity, French revolution, American independence and the Napoleonic Wars, UPROAR! follows the satirists as they lampoon those in power, from the Prince Regent to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Their prints and illustrations deconstruct the political and social landscape with surreal and razor-sharp wit, as the three men vie with each other to create the most iconic images of the day.
Alice Loxton is a historian and a lead presenter at History Hit TV and the face of the History Hit YouTube channel, where she shares her passion for history with her 1 million+ followers.
Her writing fizzes with energy on every page, and never fails to convince us that Gillray and his gang profoundly altered British humour, setting the stage for everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Private Eye and Spitting Image today. This is a book that will cause readers to reappraise everything they think they know about genteel Georgian London, and see it for what it was - a time of UPROAR!
'Alice Loxton is the star of her generation ... the next big thing in history' DAN SNOW