Material from Olive Schreiner’s letters © Olive Schreiner Letters Project Unless otherwise credited, all images © Knebworth House Archive: www.knebworthhouse.com
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
ISBN: 978–1–84954–892–2
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in Adobe Caslon Pro
Rachel Beer was both a rebel and a pioneer. In the late nineteenth century, at a time when women were still denied the vote, she became the first woman ever to edit a national British newspaper – in fact two, the Sunday Times and The Observer. It was to be over eighty years before another woman took the helm of a Fleet Street paper.
However, whilst other female journalists were restricted to frocks, frills and frippery, Rachel managed to raise her formidable voice on national and foreign political issues – including the notorious Dreyfus Affair – as well as on social and women’s issues, often controversially.
Drawing on a wealth of original material, The First Lady of Fleet Street paints a vivid picture of a remarkable woman and of the times in which she lived. It also provides an important history of two venerable Jewish families, their origins and their rise to eminence.
— AVAILABLE FROM ALL GOOD BOOKSHOPS —
WWW.THEROBSONPRESS.COM
On Wednesday 4 June 1913, fledgling newsreel cameras captured just over two-and-a-half minutes of never-to-be-forgotten British social and sporting history.
The 250,000 people thronging Epsom Downs carried with them a quartet of combustible elements: a fanatical, publicity-hungry suffragette; a scapegoat for the Titanic disaster and the pillar of the Establishment who bore him a personal grudge; a pair of feuding jockeys at odds over money and glory; and, finally, at the heart of the action, two thoroughbred horses – one a vicious savage and one the consummate equine athlete. Taken together, this was a recipe for the most notorious horse race in British history.
Now, with a view to allowing this scandal the attention it deserves, Michael Tanner replays the most dramatic day in Turf history – and finally uncovers the truth of the Suffragette Derby.
— AVAILABLE FROM ALL GOOD BOOKSHOPS —
WWW.THEROBSONPRESS.COM
From the long-reigning monarch herself to the celebrated writers, philanthropists and politicians of the day, the Victorians have been dismissed as hypocrites and frauds – or worse.
Yet to a handful of eccentrics born during Victoria’s reign, the nineteenth century remained the greatest era in human history: a time of high culture for the wealthy, ‘improvement’ for the poor, and enlightened imperial rule for the 400 million inhabitants of the British Empire. They were, to friend and foe alike, ‘the last Victorians’ – relics of a bygone civilisation.
In this daring group biography, W. Sydney Robinson explores the extraordinary lives of four of these Victorian survivors: the ‘Puritan Home Secretary’, William Joynson-Hicks (1865–1932); the ‘Gloomy Dean’ of St Paul’s Cathedral, W. R. Inge (1860–1954); the belligerent founder of the BBC, John Reith (1889–1971), and the ultra-patriotic popular historian and journalist Arthur Bryant (1899–1985).
— AVAILABLE FROM ALL GOOD BOOKSHOPS —
WWW.THEROBSONPRESS.COM
Winner of the Political Biography of the Year Award
Shortlisted for the H. W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize
Long before the phone-hacking scandal, the Leveson Inquiry and the “Fake Sheikh” there was W. T. Stead – the father of investigative journalism. Eccentric, charismatic and relentless in his pursuit of the truth, Stead made a career of “muckraking” – revealing horrific practices in the hope of shocking authorities into reform. He shot to worldwide fame when he abducted thirteen-year-old Eliza Armstrong in an audacious campaign to expose the evil of child prostitution. His actions earned him a prison sentence, but they also forced Parliament to act, and the age of consent was raised from thirteen to sixteen, where it remains.
Deemed a madman in later life for his occult pursuits, W. T. Stead never abandoned his tenacity and thirst for justice, right up until his tragic fate aboard the Titanic. Revealing a man of courage and contradiction, Muckraker depicts the remarkable rise and fall of a true Fleet Street legend.
— AVAILABLE FROM ALL GOOD BOOKSHOPS —
WWW.THEROBSONPRESS.COM
Lady Constance Lytton Page 32