UPROAR! SATIRE, SCANDAL AND PRINTMAKERS IN GEORGIAN LONDON
LONGLISTED FOR BLACKWELL’S BOOK OF THE YEAR
A GUARDIAN BEST PAPERBACK OF THE MONTH
Icon Books | Hardback 2 March 2023 | Paperback 14 March 2024
‘Splendid and wonderfully readable’ – The Guardian
London, 1772. A young artist called Thomas Rowlandson is making his way through the backstreets of the capital to begin his studies at the Royal Academy Schools. Within a few years, James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank would join him. Together they turned satire into an art form, took on the British establishment, and changed the way we see power for ever.
Against a backdrop of royal madness, political intrigue, revolution in France and America, the Napoleonic Wars and the birth of modern celebrity, UPROAR! follows the three satirists as they lampoon the powerful, from the Prince Regent to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Racing each other to create the most iconic images of the day, they laid the foundations of British humour, from Gilbert and Sullivan to Private Eye and Spitting Image.
Alice’s debut is a lively, irreverent history of Georgian London as it really was: not genteel at all, but a time of uproar.
PRAISE
‘Alice Loxton is a whirlwind of historical energy and UPROAR! is a sensational debut’ – Dan Jones
‘Zippy… a generous tribute’ – Henry Hitchings, The Times
‘Lively and engaging’ – Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday
‘An irreverent gallop through the scandalous streets of Georgian London’ – Charlotte Mullins, Country Life
‘Vivid, pacey and endlessly engaging… Irresistible stuff’ – Tracy Borman
‘Witty, well-written and full of wonderful detail, UPROAR! is a glorious read’ – Dr Janina Ramirez
‘An exuberant, iconoclastic and, yes, uproarious debut’ – Jessie Childs
‘As vivid and vibrant as any Rowlandson print – bawdy, beautiful, and brilliant’ – Kate Lister
IN THE PRESS
UPROAR! was reviewed in The Times, the TLS, the London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Spectator, BBC History Magazine, Country Life, The New Statesman and the Mail on Sunday. Alice also wrote about the book for The Telegraph, and discussed it on BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends and Times Radio.
For the launch, Alice recreated a Georgian print shop window in London, perhaps the first since the Georgian age.
THE 2023 UPROAR! TOUR
Alice toured the UK when UPROAR! was published, with highlights including:
In conversation with Dan Snow at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford Literary Festival
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace
Hay Festival, with Suzannah Lipscomb, David Olusoga and Sathnam Sanghera
Chalke History Festival
Edinburgh Fringe
The National Archives
Southwark Cathedral
Waterstones Piccadilly
London Original Print Fair, Somerset House
The Cartoon Museum
Winchester Books Festival, in conversation with Dan Snow
ORDER YOUR COPY
Bookshop.org (supports independent bookshops)
