Vic Gatrell (or V.A.C. Gatrell) is a British historian. He is a Life Fellow of

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of t ...

Life

Born to working-class immigrant Londoners in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

, Gatrell went to state schools in

Pietermaritzburg Pietermaritzburg (; Zulu: umGungundlovu) is the capital and second-largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1838 and is currently governed by the Msunduzi Local Municipality. Its Zulu name umGungundlovu ...

and

Port Elizabeth Gqeberha (), formerly Port Elizabeth and colloquially often referred to as P.E., is a major seaport and the most populous city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is the seat of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, So ...

and then to Rhodes University, where he graduated with first-class Honours, and won an Elsie Ballot scholarship to Cambridge. At St John's College he took first-class honours in history and completed his Ph.D. on 'The Commercial Middle Class in Manchester 1820–1857', before becoming a research fellow and then a teaching fellow of Gonville and Caius College. In the Cambridge History Faculty Gatrell was appointed Lecturer in British Economic and Social History in 1971, and then Reader in British history. He co-edited ''

The Historical Journal ''The Historical Journal'', formerly known as ''The Cambridge Historical Journal'', is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. It publishes approximately thirty-five articles per year on all aspects of British, ...

'', 1976–1986. He is among the pioneer scholars who have worked on the history of crime and punishment, and then on the history of emotions. He became Professor of British History at the

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...

2003–2009. He returned to Cambridge in 2009 as a professorial Life Fellow of Caius, and now lives there. His ''The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868'' (Oxford, 1994) won the Royal Historical Society's Whitfield Prize, and was nominated as one of the historical ''Canon'' in the Times Higher Education Supplement, 2010. It is a seminal study of changing attitudes to and emotions about capital punishment across a period of profound cultural change, and it is still in print.

Works

His ''City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-century London'' (Atlantic, 2006) is a study of satirical caricature and manners from 1780 to 1830. It was joint winner of Britain's premier history prize, the Wolfson Prize for History. It also won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Banister Fletcher Award for art history, and was listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. His ''The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London's Golden Age'' (Allen Lane and Penguin, 2013) is a history of 'proto-bohemian' Covent Garden and the 'lower' art world in eighteenth-century London. It argues for the significance of the arts that celebrated 'real life' in that era. It was shortlisted for the Hessell-Tiltman Prize. Each of these books has resulted in extensive television and radio contributions and book festival talks. In 2010 Alastair Lawrence's BBC4 television series 'Rude Britannia' was underpinned by Gatrell's 'City of Laughter'. Gatrell's ''Conspiracy on Cato Street: Liberty and Revolution in Regency London'' was published by Cambridge University Press in April 2022 and was anticipated in his 2020 lecture on the

Cato Street Conspiracy The Cato Street Conspiracy was a plot to murder all the British cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool in 1820. The name comes from the meeting place near Edgware Road in London. The police had an informer; the plotters fell in ...

for

Gresham College Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in Central London, England. It does not enroll students or award degrees. It was founded in 1596 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, and hosts ove ...

Awards and honours

*1976 T.S.Ashton Prize of the Economic History Society, winner for 'Labour Power and the Size of Firms in the Lancashire Cotton Industry', Economic History Review, XXX (1), Feb 1977 *1994 The Whitfield Prize of the Royal Historical Society, winner for ''The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People'' *1997 Senior Visiting Fellow, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University *2002 Visiting Fellow, Australian National University, Canberra *2006

Wolfson History Prize The Wolfson History Prizes are literary awards given annually in the United Kingdom to promote and encourage standards of excellence in the writing of history for the general public. Prizes are given annually for two or three exceptional works ...

, ''City of Laughter'' *2006 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, winner for ''City of Laughter'' *2006

Authors' Club The Authors' Club is a British membership organisation established as a place where writers could meet and talk. It was founded by the novelist and critic Walter Besant in 1891. It is headquartered at the National Liberal Club. The Authors' Cl ...

Banister Fletcher Award in art history, shortlisted for ''City of Laughter'' *2006

Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize, is an annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award. With its m ...

, listed for ''City of Laughter'' *2010 ''

Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...

'' ''Hanging Tree'' in 'The Canon' of seminal works *2013 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize shortlist for ''The First Bohemians''

Select bibliography

*''Robert Owen: A New View of Society and Report to the County of Lanark'' (Penguin, 1971) *''Crime and the Law: the Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500 (Europa, 1980) (with Bruce Lenman and Geoffrey Parker) *''Crime, Authority, and the Policeman-State', in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950, vol. iii, pp. 243 - 310. *''The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868'' (Oxford, 1994) *''City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-century London'' (Atlantic, 2006) *''Thomas Rowlandson: Pleasures and Pursuits in Georgian England'' (Vassar College, 2010), by Patricia Phagan, Vic Gatrell and Amelia Rauser (exhibition catalogue and texts) *'' The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London's Golden Age'' (Allen Lane, 2013) *''Conspiracy on Cato Street: Liberty and Revolution in Regency London'' (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

References

External links

Staff page on the Essex University website
Matthew Reisz, 'Past Mistakes', Higher Educational Supplement 15 October 2009

'Vic Gatrell explains what impels his writing'. History Today, May 2007; https://web.archive.org/web/20150207125307/http://www.wolfson.org.uk/history-prize/previous-winners/. http://www.englishpen.org/events/prizes/hessell-tiltman-prize/

Gonville and Caius Fellows {{DEFAULTSORT:Gatrell, Vic Academics of the University of Essex Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge 1941 births Living people