Clare Paterson – författare

On Thursday, 5 April 1877, police charged 30-year-old Annie Besant and her colleague Charles Bradlaugh with breaching the Obscene Publications Act 1857. The reason was the scandalous sale of a slim book called The Fruits of Philosophy – a book that advocated for birth control in an era when parents were encouraged to keep their daughters ignorant and fearful. The publication of this guide, which the prosecutor in the trial referred to as a ‘dirty, filthy book’, made Annie famous.But this was not Annie’s first or last battle against Victorian social mores.She was a good Christian wife who became an atheist; a liberal campaigner who became a prominent socialist activist in the strikes and protests of the 1880s; a Theosophical High Priestess who became heavily involved in the Indian nationalist movement. Viewed as a dangerous threat to imperial government and authority, she was a fearless and formidable freedom fighter.Annie Besant lived an extraordinary and inspiring life, and yet because of her complexities and seeming contradictions, she has been sidelined by history.From politics to the occult, from Christianity to Theosophy and from the London suburbs to a pyre on the banks of an Indian river, The Nine Lives of Annie Besant tells the complete story of a woman who broke all the rules.

‘This has everything I love in a book; drama, intrigue and a giant, stuffed mammal.’ Sue PerkinsMr Horniman’s Walrus tells the story of the rise and fall of three generations of a remarkable and dysfunctional Victorian family – the Hornimans – exploring the lives and loves behind their extraordinary and varied legacies.Family patriarch John Horniman established the tea company that bore his name in 1826, which went on to become one of the best-known brands of nineteenth-century Britain. His son Frederick created the eclectic and wonderful Horniman Museum in London, and his granddaughter Annie was a theatrical impresario responsible for founding Ireland’s national theatre, the Abbey. Across more than a century, the family embodied changing middle-class attitudes from patriarchy to the new spirit of modernity; and their progress mirrored the high point of Victorian entrepreneurialism and the changes ushered in by the Edwardian age. Drawing on her years of research and unfettered access to the family archive, Clare Paterson has written a riveting tale of trade, collecting, the stage, sex and politics in Victorian Britain. For the first time, Mr Horniman’s Walrus unpicks the lives of this fascinating family, including their slips from grace as well as their astounding achievements. It’s a story of capital and culture, philanthropy and empire, but also bankruptcy, betrayal, intrigue, lunacy and deep involvement in the esoterica of the occult.