In the age of enlightenment, the public developed a taste for sheer spectacle. Suitably awe-inspiring, dazzling versions of the world’s most famous volcano, Vesuvius, could soon be found across Europe and North America.
John Brewer and Stella Tillyard evaluate a book both historical and fictional.
Whenever the nation went to the polls in eighteenth-century England, the small hamlet of Garrat staged its own mock election. But, as John Brewer shows here, this was not only the occasion for a riotous burlesque - it provided the vehicle for some radical political ideas.
'A trifle... a thing of no value... a bauble' or an educational aid, the gift-wrapping of a social morality? Toys mirror a culture, argues John Brewer - for society's attitude towards play reflects its conception of the role of childhood.
Law and Disorder in Stuart and Hanoverian England.
