Dr Jacqueline Riding specialises in British history and art of the long eighteenth century. Formerly curator of the Palace of Westminster and Director of the Handel House Museum, she is the award-winning author of Peterloo: The Story of the Manchester Massacre and Jacobites: A New History of the '45 Rebellion, as well as a consultant for museums, galleries, historic buildings and feature films. She was the historical adviser on Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner (2014), Peterloo (2018) and Wash Westmoreland's Colette (2018). She lives in South London.
"'Deft and richly detailed ... rescues the artist from John Bull caricature' - Michael Prodger '[An] excellent new biography ... Riding is particularly good on how the boy who was born into modest circumstances in 1697 spent much of the first half of his life wanting to be a 'proper' artist dealing with grand, historical subjects.' - Kathryn Hughes 'An entertaining ... richly worked and varied ""progress"" ... amid the displays of wounded vanity and cantankerous self-assertion, there remains something hugely impressive, and rather attractive, in the Hogarth who emerges from these pages' - Matthew Sturgis 'Marvellous and timely ... a vivid and compelling reconstruction of the settings of Hogarth's life and artistic achievements, and of the nature of the man' - Linda Colley, author 'A special book that drops you heart first into Hogarth's world - like the great man's canvasses, it is full of richness, originality and considered humour, unafraid to shock with thrilling new insight' - Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, Director of V&A East and Professor of Practice, SOAS"