The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

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