WRITING ON THE WALL: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of Eighteenth Century Britain

‘Fascinating … not only a history of graffiti, but also a history of the 18th century through lost voices of the people who lived through it.’ The Times

‘You’ve read the Austen and seen the Gainsboroughs, well this is the real Eighteenth Century in the words of those who walked the streets, worked the coal seams and clung to the topsail yards” Dan Snow

What if walls could talk? For historian Madeleine Pelling, they can – if you know where to look.

A brilliant new cultural history of the long eighteenth century, Writing on the Wall is told through the marks its citizens left behind, bringing into focus lost voices from the highest to the lowest in society. From the centre of London to the islands of the Caribbean, Pelling goes in search of graffiti, evidence of how ordinary people experienced the world-changing events that defined their lives – from political prisoners to sex workers, homesick sailors, Romantic poets and the artisans of the industrial revolution.

Here are lives, loves, triumphs and failures, scratched into the walls of prisons and latrines, chalked up on doors and etched into windows. The names of their creators may be lost to history, but together they tell the real story of Britain’s most rebellious and transformative century.

Madeleine Pelling is a cultural historian, writer and broadcaster. Her first book, Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Britain (Profile Books, 2024), tells a history of the period through the marks its inhabitants left behind. It was described as ‘fascinating’ by The Times, and ‘ingenious’ by The Spectator.

Madeleine is the ARIAs-nominated writer and co-host of History Hit’s After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal, and a regular contributor for television and radio, having worked with broadcasters including Channel 4, Sky Arts, Warner Bros and Times Radio.

She holds a PhD from the University of York, and her words appear in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, BBC History Magazine and History Today, as well as in numerous scholarly journals and edited collections.