In a panoramic survey of the Victorian Age, this work describes the men and women who brought the modern age into being. The capitalist world was challenged by the ideas of such men as Karl Marx, William Morris and George Bernard Shaw - here they are. Here are also the lofty and famous and here too are the poor and the obscure.

What would you find if you went back and re-read all of your favourite books from childhood? Francis Spufford discovers both delight and sadness, in this memoir of a boy who retreats into books, faced with a tragedy in his family.

Set in mid-Victorian England, this novel follows the fight for ascendancy among the clergy and dependents of a great English cathedral.

This text initiates the series of six Palliser novels in which Anthony Trollope reached the height of his literary powers.

Son of a bankrupt landowner, Frank Gresham is intent on marrying his beloved Mary Thorne, despite her illegitimacy and apparent poverty. Frank's ambitious mother and haughty aunt are set against the match, however, and push him to save the family's mortgaged estate by making a good marriage to a wealthy heiress.

Antonia Fraser's bestselling biography of one of the most romantic and controversial figures in British history.