Lively and innovative, these well-illustrated essays on the making of the Victorian entertainment industry get inside the popular experience of the pub, music-hall, theater and comic press. In this new leisure world, audiences learned how to be performers themselves, adopting roles and styles appropriate to the unsettling dynamics of the modern city. A major advance in understanding how popular culture actually works, this is a model of the successful integration of the theory and practice of social history and cultural studies.

Simon Denchfield's interest in radical politics is taken over by sinister forces that propel him into leading a successful coup against the government. Once in power his backers purge their enemies and withdraw their support. Arrested, he is condemned as a traitor and only escape's death by the intercession of an unlikely saviour.