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THE RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Gobsmacking' The Times 'Luscious' Mail on Sunday 'Delectable . . . ravishing' Sunday Times 'A chocolate box full of delicious gothic delights - jump in' Lucy Worsley 'Stranger than fiction, as dark as any gothic drama . . . utterly gripping' Amanda Foreman 'Brings to life the colourful characters of the Georgian era's most notorious families with all the verve and skill of the era's finest novelists . . . A powdered and pomaded, sordid and silk-swathed adventure' Hallie Rubenhold Many know Lord Byron as leading poet of the Romantic movement. But few know the dynasty from which he emerged; infamous for its scandal and impropriety, with tales of elopement, murder, kidnaping, profligacy, doomed romance and adultery. A sumptuous story that begins in rural Nottinghamshire and plays out in the gentleman's clubs of Georgian London, amid tempests on far-flung seas, and in the glamour of pre-revolutionary France, The Fall of the House of Byron is the acclaimed account of intense family drama over three turbulent generations.

It is safe to say that selling sex constituted a significant, and visible, part of urban culture in Georgian England. Alongside the rise of the 'polite society' of Jane Austen's novels, the city of London had long been portrayed as a centre of vice and debauchery. In the shadows of the fashionable public parks and gardens, in alleyways along the banks of the Thames, even at church doors, there lurked a world of criminality and prostitution for which the bawdyhouse became one of the most potent symbols.The book will explore what is was like to run, work in, and frequent these establishments, which ranged from the filthy East End hovel to grand upmarket apartments. Through newspaper reports, criminal trials, political speeches and bawdy pamphlets and prints, it will also explore how they were perceived and, as the nineteenth century dawned, how the threat of disease and Victorian prudery meant that they were increasingly feared by the public and controlled by the legal system - and the 'happy hooker' firmly confined to the past.