Flamboyant, cultured and refined, aristocracy is often seen as a national treasure. Lords of Misrule takes a different view and considers the role of an aristocracy behaving badly. This is a book about the political, social and moral failings of aristocracy and the ways in which they have featured in political rhetoric. Drawing on the views of critics of aristocracy, it explores the dark side of power without responsibility. Less 'patrician paragons' than dissolute and debauched debtors, the aristocrats featured here undermined, rather than augmented, the fabric of national life. For the...

This collection offers the first detailed investigation of political life in nineteenth-century London. London politics did not share the free-trade and civil-equality preoccupations of the provinces which currently dominate scholarly literature. As these essays reveal, the capital remained more concerned with older struggles for political independence. By highlighting the inability of existing accounts to accommodate metropolitan distinctiveness, the collection aims to stimulate a major reappraisal not of London politics alone, but of Victorian political history more generally.