Vic Gatrell is a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a member of the Cambridge history faculty. Born in South Africa, he went to Rhodes University before taking honours in history and completing his Ph.D. in Cambridge. In Cambridge he was Reader in History until he became Professor of British History at the University of Essex 2003-9 - after which he returned to Cambridge, where he now lives.
His City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-century London (Atlantic Books, 2006) has been awarded both the Wolfson History Prize[1] (the premier award for history in Britain) and the International PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for history, and was listed for the BBC's Samuel Johnson Prize for all non-fiction and shortlisted for the Banister Fletcher Award in art history by The Authors' Club. A study of satirical caricature and manners from 1780 to 1830, it has been described as "the most sumptuous and beautiful history book in years", and as a "masterpiece": "not since E. P. Thompson has a historian written with such passion, originality and wit"; "It would be hard to overstate the importance of this wonderful book."
His earlier book, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868 (Oxford, 1994) was awarded the Whitfield Prize of the Royal Historical Society. In 2010 it was included 'The Canon' of seminal works in the Times Higher Education magazine.[2]
Vic Gatrell is currently writing a history of 'proto-bohemian' Covent Garden and the 'lower' art world in eighteenth-century London. He helped initiate and was historical advisor on BBC4's Rude Britannia series (2010), and is a frequent talking head on televised programmes on English history.