Children’s Homes

Peter Higginbotham • £14.99
Pen & Sword

What image does the word orphanage conjure up in your mind? A sunny scene of carefree children at play in the grounds of a large ivy-clad house? Or a forbidding grey edifice whose cowering inmates were ruled over with a rod of iron by a stern, starched matron? In Children’s Homes, Peter Higginbotham explores the history of the institutions in Britain that were used as a substitute for children s natural homes. From the Tudor times to the present day, this fascinating book answers questions such as: who founded and ran all these institutions? who paid for them? where have they all gone? and what was life like for their inmates? Illustrated throughout, Children’s Homes provides an essential, previously overlooked, account of the history of these British institutions.

A Visitor’s Guide to Georgian England

Monica Hall • £12.99
Pen & Sword

Could you successfully be a Georgian? Find yourself immersed in the pivotal world of Georgian England, exciting times to live in as everything was booming; the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the nascent Empire; inhabited by Mary Shelley, the Romantic Poets and their contemporaries. However, rather than just wondering about the famous or infamous, you will find everything you need to know in order to survive undetected among the ordinary people. What to wear, how to behave yourself in public, earn a living, and find somewhere to live. Very importantly, you will be given advice on how to stay on the right side of the law, and how to avoid getting seriously ill. Monica Hall creatively awakens this bygone era, filling the pages with all aspects of daily life within the period, calling upon diaries, illustrations, letters, poetry, prose, 18th century laws and archives. This detailed account intimately explores the ever changing lives of those who lived through Britain’s imperial prowess, the birth of modern capitalism, the reverence of the industrial revolution and the upheaval of great political reform and class division. A Visitor’s Guide to Georgian England will appeal to Romantic poetry lovers, social history fans, fiction and drama lovers, students and anyone with an interest in this revolutionary era.

Tracing Your Church of England Ancestors

Stuart A Raymond • £14.99
Pen & Sword

In his latest handbook on the records of the major Christian religions, Stuart Raymond focuses on the Church of England. He identifies the available sources, comments on their strengths and weaknesses and explains how to make the best use of them. The history of the C of E is covered, from the Reformation in the mid-16th century until the present day. Anyone who has a family connection with the Church of England or a special interest in the local history of the church will find his book to be a mine of practical information and an essential aid for their research. A sequence of short, accessible chapters gives an insight into the relevant records and demonstrates how much fascinating genealogical information can be gleaned from them. After providing a brief history of the Church of England, and a description of its organisation, Raymond explores the wide range of records that researchers can consult. Among them are parish registers, bishops transcripts, marriage licences, churchwardens accounts, vestry minutes, church magazines, tithe records and the records of the ecclesiastical courts and Anglican charities and missions. A wealth of research material is available and this book is the perfect introduction to it.

The Square and the Tower

Niall Ferguson • £25
Penguin Random House

What if everything we thought we knew about history was wrong? Most history is hierarchical: it’s about popes, presidents, and prime ministers. But what if that’s simply because they create the historical archives? What if we are missing equally powerful but less visible networks – leaving them to the conspiracy theorists, with their dreams of all-powerful Illuminati?

The 21st century has been hailed as the Networked Age. But in The Square and the Tower Niall Ferguson argues that social networks are nothing new. From the printers and preachers who made the Reformation to the freemasons who led the American Revolution, it was the networkers who disrupted the old order of popes and kings. The conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries already have unnerving parallels today.

Far from being novel, our era is the Second Networked Age, with the computer in the role of the printing press. Once we understand this, both the past, and the future, start to look very different indeed.