David Waller is an author specialising in business and historical biography. His new book The Reputation Game, co-authored with Rupert Younger of Oxford University, looks at the way reputations are built, maintained, lost and rebuilt in private, public and commercial life. His other books include The Perfect Man, a biography of Eugen Sandow, the man the late Victorians reckoned to have the best body in the world as well as The Magnificent Mrs Tennant, a life of a Victorian society hostess who had a fling with Gustave Flaubert. … Read more about ABOUT DAVID
Why we should never listen to the Luddites
When Joseph Whitworth was growing up in Stockport, the man who became the greatest mechanical engineer of the Victorian age witnessed a traumatic sight. In 1812, this unlovely industrial town on the outskirts of Manchester was overrun by Luddite rioters, all the more terrifying as they were wearing women’s clothes as they went on the […]