Comyns Beaumont was the greatest iconoclast of his age: There was no idea so sacred that he dared not challenge it. He struck out at the prudery of his age and made a roaring success of The Bystanderh; he struck at the received notions of geology and meteorology putting forward his own theory of meteorism; he challenged history as it is widely believed, asserting that a great deception had been worked by Constantine the Great; he challenged William Shakespeare as the author of the plays we associate with is name, and he even challenged the virginity of the Virgin Queen! Nor were these challenges the beginning or the end of his rebellion, as his colourful and informative autobiography shows. He may have been a Rebel in Fleet Street, but he was an ardent defender of its freedom to the very end; not only that, but some of the heresies for which he was most mocked in his lifetime are mainstream views in our own time. Many haven't yet accepted Britain as Atlantis, but in time...

A panoramic portrait of a remarkable woman and the tumultuous Victorian era on which she made her mark, The First Lady of Fleet Street chronicles the meteoric rise and tragic fall of Rachel Beer—indomitable heiress, social crusader, and newspaper pioneer. Rich with period detail and drawing on a wealth of original material, this sweeping work of never-before-told history recounts the ascent of two of London’s most prominent Jewish immigrant families—the Sassoons and the Beers. Born into one, Rachel married into the other, wedding newspaper proprietor Frederick Beer, the sole heir to his father’s enormous fortune. Though she and Frederick became leading London socialites, Rachel was ambitious and unwilling to settle for a comfortable, idle life. She used her husband’s platform to assume the editorship of not one but two venerable Sunday newspapers—the Sunday Times and The Observer—a stunning accomplishment at a time when women were denied the vote and allowed little access to education. Ninety years would pass before another woman would take the helm of a major newspaper on either side of the Atlantic. It was an exhilarating period in London’s history—fortunes were being amassed (and squandered), masterpieces were being created, and new technologies were revolutionizing daily life. But with scant access to politicians and press circles, most female journalists were restricted to issuing fashion reports and dispatches from the social whirl. Rachel refused to limit herself or her beliefs. In the pages of her newspapers, she opined on Whitehall politics and British imperial adventures abroad, campaigned for women’s causes, and doggedly pursued the evidence that would exonerate an unjustly accused French military officer in the so-called Dreyfus Affair. But even as she successfully blazed a trail in her professional life, Rachel’s personal travails were the stuff of tragedy. Her marriage to Frederick drove an insurmountable wedge between herself and her conservative family. Ultimately, she was forced to retreat from public life entirely, living out the rest of her days in stately isolation. While the men of her era may have grabbed more headlines, Rachel Beer remains a pivotal figure in the annals of journalism—and the long march toward equality between the sexes. With The First Lady of Fleet Street, she finally gets the front page treatment she deserves.