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In These Times

Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars, 1793-1815

Jenny Uglow

A beautifully observed history of the home front during the Napoleonic Wars from one of Britain's greatest historians.We know the thrilling, terrible stories of the battles of the Napoleonic  wars  - but what of those left behind? The people on a Norfolk farm, in a Yorkshire mill, a Welsh iron foundry, an Irish village, a London bank or a Scottish mountain? The aristocrats and paupers, old and young, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers - how did the war touch their lives? Jenny Uglow, the prize-winning author of The Lunar Men and Nature's Engraver,   follows the gripping back-and-forth of the first global war,  but  turns the news upside down,  seeing how it reached the people.   Illustrated by the satires of Gillray, Rowlandson and the paintings of Turner and Constable, and combining the familiar voices of Jane Austen, Wordsworth, Scott and Byron with others lost in the crowd, In These Times delves into the archives to tell the moving story of how people lived  and loved and sang and wrote, struggling through hard times and opening  new horizons that would change their country for a century ahead.

First published:
2014
Published by:
Faber & Faber
Length:
Hardcover 752 pages

About the author

Jenny Uglow grew up in Cumbria and now lives in Canterbury. Her books include prize-winning biographies of Elizabeth Gaskell and William Hogarth. The Lunar Men, published in 2002, was described by Richard Holmes as 'an extraordinarily gripping account', while Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick, won the National Arts Writers Award for 2007 and A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize. The Pinecone, published in 2012, tells the story of Romantic visionary Sarah Losh and was described as 'a quiet masterpiece'. Her book In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars, 1793-1815 was longlisted for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Jenny is Chair of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature.