{"title":"Books by James Hobson","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781399006064","title":"Voices of the Georgian Age","description":"Voices of the Georgian Age is the story of seventeen witnesses to the remarkably diverse Georgian century after 1720. While being very different in many ways, the voices have two things in common: they have an outstanding story to tell, and that story is available to all for free on the internet. Despite the obvious constraints of surviving evidence, men and woman, rich and poor and respectable and criminal are all covered. Some wrote out their life story with deliberation, knowing that it would be read in future, while others simply put their private thoughts to paper for their own benefit. All are witnesses to their age.   This book guides you through their diaries, memoirs and travelogues, providing an entertaining insight in their lives, and a personal history of the period. It is also a preparatory guide for those wishing to read the original documents themselves.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43128747360434,"sku":"9781399006064","price":22.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781399006064_e600153c-f0a8-4a6a-8539-2a1a3bc2151c.jpg?v=1786019579"},{"product_id":"9781399054041","title":"The Georgian 'Establishment'","description":"This book is a biography of Edward Law, Lord Ellenborough (1750–1818) and a review of the Georgian ruling class from 1770 to 1820. We visit the established church, the public schools, the inns of court, the only universities in England, the law courts, the Houses of Commons and Lords, and the Royal Family.As a lawyer, a Member of Parliament and Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Ellenborough played a part in all of the contentious legal and political issues of the late Georgian period, including the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the turbulent 1790s, the reaction against the French Revolution abroad and political radicalism at home. He was a friend to the Prince Regent in his struggle against his wife Caroline and one of the custodians of George III during his illness. Our subject supported the institutions of church and state with a ferocity that surprised even the most fervent proponents of the status quo at the time. He used his court to prosecute atheism, libel, treason and immorality and fight against any change in the political system, no matter how small. He was draconian, cruel and unforgiving, but was also a brilliantly able lawyer and judge who was a stickler for correct procedures and precedents - most of the time anyway. He was deeply unpopular with people who did not matter and regarded as reactionary even by people in his own ruling class. Ellenborough lived in an age when the ruling classes neither needed nor wanted to be popular, and he went one step further and was openly contemptuous of the notion.The book also reconstructs his life outside the Law Courts and Parliament - his private character and interests, his father and grandfather and the rapid rise of his family. The life of his wife, Anne Towry, gives a great insight into the life of women at the top of Georgian Society. Ellenborough is an outstanding and interesting figure who deserves a modern biography.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54911744672117,"sku":"9781399054041","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781399054041_9c012bc4-7109-4696-a2f5-c20b45f99e81.jpg?v=1786019341"},{"product_id":"9781399008266","title":"Radical Victorians","description":"There is more to the Victorian era than respectability, economic success and the grudging solution of the practical social problems they encountered. The politicians, generals and commercial classes have been well covered in popular history books, but there were also thinkers of radical and unsettling ideas who had a real influence at the time. Many were women, many from the middle and working classes, and almost all outside the power structure. They were by no means all fringe ideas either - in 1840, Queen Victoria herself attended a s ance, for example.   The book is a biography focussed history of some of these challenging ideas and the men and women who promoted them. It looks at radical thinkers and movers, the people who stepped outside of the social norm and propelled the Victorians towards the modern day.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56298713579893,"sku":"9781399008266","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781399008266_50376544-97e5-4c3d-999e-81686613ee2f.jpg?v=1786019609"},{"product_id":"9781526761842","title":"Charles I's Executioners","description":"On an icy winter's day in January 1649, a unique event in English history took place on a scaffold outside of Whitehall: Charles I, King of England, was executed. The king had been held to account and the Divine Right of Kings disregarded. Regicide, a once-unfathomable act, formed the basis of the Commonwealth's new dawn.   The killers of the king were soldiers, lawyers, Puritans, Republicans and some simply opportunists, all brought together under one infamous banner. While the events surrounding Charles I and Cromwell are well-trodden, the lives of the other fifty-eight men - their backgrounds, ideals and motives - has been sorely neglected.   Their stories are a powerful tale of revenge and a clash of beliefs; their fates determined by that one decision. When Charles II was restored he enacted a deadly wave of retribution against the men who had secured his father's fate. Some of the regicides pleaded for mercy, many went into hiding or fled abroad; others stoically awaited their sentence. This is their shocking story: the ideals that united them, and the decision that unmade them.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56302155661685,"sku":"9781526761842","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781526761842_89c15575-4289-4b2c-92d0-95ec28d0a01d.jpg?v=1786021618"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-james-hobson.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}