Peter Ackroyd

In Victorian London, an actress is hanged for poisoning her husband, when she should have been awarded a medal, the husband being a serial killer. Lots of atmosphere and period detail on immigrants and criminals, including an appearance by Karl Marx.

"Dominion, the fifth volume of Peter Ackroyd's ... History of England, begins in 1815 as national glory following the Battle of Waterloo gives way to a post-war depression and ends with the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901."--

Retells the story of King Arthur, the golden age of Camelot, the perilous search for the Holy Grail, and the love of Guinevere and Lancelot.

The fourth volume of Peter Ackroyd's enthralling History of England, beginning in 1688 with a revolution and ending in 1815 with a famous victory. In Revolution, Peter Ackroyd takes readers from William of Orange's accession following the Glorious Revolution to the Regency, when the flamboyant Prince of Wales ruled in the stead of his mad father, George III, and England was-again-at war with France, a war that would end with the defeat of Napoleon...

From a leading historian and writer, a delightful exploration of the great English tradition of treading the boards. The English Actor charts the uniquely English approach to stagecraft, from the medieval period to the present day. In thirty chapters, Peter Ackroyd describes, with superb narrative skill, the genesis of acting--deriving from the Church tradition of Mystery Plays--through the flourishing of the craft in the Renaissance, to modern methods...

"The arrival of an enigmatic stranger wreaks havoc on the denizens of the idyllic English village of Little Camborne; most notably two apparently harmless women. Miss Finch and Miss Swallow, cousins, have put their pasts behind them and settled into conventional country life. But when Theodore Cadmus - from Caldera, a Mediterranean island nobody has heard of - moves into the middle cottage, the safe monotony of their lives is shattered.The fates of...