Promotional Information

1994 Whitfield Prize for British History

About the Author

V. A. C. Gatrell is University Lecturer and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. He is editor of Robert Owen: A New View of Society (Pelican, 1971) and Crime and Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500 (Europa, 1980), and a well-known author of numerous articles in social and economic history. He lives in Cambridge.

Reviews

There is plenty to incite horror, but the cleverness of the book is the way it puts the English way of execution into a political context Jeremy Paxman, Independent monumental in the subtlety and richness of the argument ... a rare combination of pellucid clarity and passion that carries the reader on to the final chapter without a single longeur. John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph A quite outstanding book, moving, perceptive ... richly imaginative. Linda Colley, Observer

There is plenty to incite horror, but the cleverness of the book is the way it puts the English way of execution into a political context Jeremy Paxman, Independent monumental in the subtlety and richness of the argument ... a rare combination of pellucid clarity and passion that carries the reader on to the final chapter without a single longeur. John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph A quite outstanding book, moving, perceptive ... richly imaginative. Linda Colley, Observer