STEP back in time to the Regency era in Cheshire with a new book by a county-based author.
Sue Wilkes has already produced a book entitled Narrow window, Narrow Lives: The Industrial Revolution in Lancashire.
But now she has come up with Regency Cheshire, which was published last week.
The physics graduate and specialist in social history and biography has lived in Cuddington, Cheshire, for 11 years.
Regency Cheshire gives a new insight into an age of contrasts: elegance and glamour against grinding poverty and bloodshed.
The book brings to life the social changes, new fashions and pastimes, scandal and political skirmishes of the era and paints a picture of society with maps and sketches.
It explores changes in the county’s main industries of cheese, salt, cotton and silk, as well as transport.
Eye witness accounts and family histories from all classes bring home the real effects of these changes.
Local elite and prominent county families, such as the Grosvenor and Egerton families, are used as examples of the lifestyles of the gentry.
The book also captures the violence behind the reforms – the uprising of the trade workers and the terrified reactions from authority, all amid the turbulence of the Napoleonic wars.
Written about the era of Jane Austen, Beau Brummell and Walter Scott, the book gives a funny and vibrant account of the changes to everyday life for the upper classes.
Sue explained that she draws inspiration from Jane Austen: “She is always precise with her language, no word is wasted and things are kept moving forward, and this is what I try to do.
“I have always had an interest in the Regency period, probably ever since reading my first Jane Austen novel.”
Sue and her husband have two children, Lizzie, 21 and Gareth, 17. A member of the Society of Authors and a contributor to US and UK publications including BBC History, Sue is now working on two new books – Stolen Childhoods and Tracing your Canal Ancestors.
