Conspiracy on Cato Street: A Tale of Liberty and Revolution in Regency London by Vic Gatrell Cambridge University Press, 474 pages, £25
Anyone who still thinks that the Regency period that largely followed the Napoleonic Wars was a genteel, Jane Austen-infused era of elegance and romance should read this book by Vic Gatrell. As he argues in this definitive study: “Inequality, exploitation, disfranchisement, enclosure, factories, slavery, war, hunger, beggary, hangings, transportation, floggings, bullets, sabres and government repression... were what guaranteed Regency order and enabled the privileged to cavort so stylishly.”
The Cato Street conspiracy of February 1820 was the culmination of a series of incidents of unrest caused by unemployment, bad harvests, high prices and starvation following the war. A small group of desperate and deluded men, holed up in…
