Description

‘A wonderful, vibrant account’ Susie Dent
‘This is the real eighteenth century’ Dan Snow
‘A secret history like no other’ BBC History Magazine, Books of the Year 2024

What if walls could talk? For historian Madeleine Pelling, they can – if you know where to look

An aristocrat carves obscenities into a tavern window with his diamond ring. A shopkeeper’s daughter sketches customers with a piece of coal. A desperate highwayman, condemned to death, scratches his initials into his prison cell door.

Writing on the Wall goes in search of the hidden voices of Britain’s most rebellious and transformative era – a time when anyone in possession of a sharp point and ready surface could find their voice and immortalise their message. Through the marks made by ordinary people, scratched into walls, doors, windows and more, Madeleine Pelling brings the lost stories of the past to life in all their unguarded glory.

Publisher Review

You’ve read the Austen and seen the Gainsboroughs, well this is the real Eighteenth Century in the words of those who walked the streets, worked the coal seems and clung to the topsail yards. — Dan Snow From the ingenious starting point of a humble scratch on glass or daub on brick, Madeleine Pelling crafts a rich and complex portrait of a society in transition — Jacqueline Riding, author * Hogarth: A Life in Progress * An erudite, dazzling and thought-provoking study of the graffiti of the period – be its creator Romantic poet or Jacobite, King Mob or Caribbean prisoner of war, Pelling teases out lost narratives with humanity and flair — Flora Fraser, author * Pretty Young Rebel * An extraordinary history of ordinary people. In this original and impressive study of eighteenth-century graffiti, Pelling foregrounds the protestors, prisoners, rebels and romantics who all left their unique mark on the past — Hannah Grieg, historian and consultant on ‘Bridgerton’ and ‘The Favourite’ From the ingenious starting point of a humble scratch on glass or daub on brick, Madeleine Pelling crafts a rich and complex portrait of a society in transition. — Jacqueline Riding, author of Hogarth: Life in Progress and Jacobites: A New History of the ’45 Rebellion