The Gaol: The Story of Newgate - London's most notorious prison

by Kelly Grovier

0 ratings • 0 reviews • 0 shelved
Book cover for The Gaol

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

For over 800 years Newgate was the grimy axle around which British society slowly twisted. This is where such legendary outlaws as Robin Hood and Captain Kidd met their fates, where the rapier-wielding playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe sharpened their quills, and where flamboyant highwaymen like Claude Duval and James Maclaine made legions of women swoon. While London's theatres came and went, the gaol endured as London's unofficial stage. From the Peasants Revolt to the Great Fire, it was at Newgate that Englands greatest dramas unfolded. By piecing together the lives of forgotten figures as well as re-examining the prison's links with more famous individuals, from Dick Whittington to Charles Dickens, this thrilling history goes in search of a ghostly place, erased by time, which has inspired more poems and plays, paintings and novels, than any other structure in British history.
  • ISBN10 0719561329
  • ISBN13 9780719561320
  • Publish Date 10 July 2008
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 10 August 2010
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher John Murray Press
  • Imprint John Murray Publishers Ltd
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 352
  • Language English