Brilliantly researched and written, this is the definitive history of the city of Brighton. Divided into five sections – Fishermen and Farmers, Princes and Palaces, Late Georgian, Victorian Marvels and Mysteries, Battle Scene and Transformation – it shows how Brighton grew from a small fishing village. For almost thirty years Clifford Musgrave was the director of the Royal Pavilion, the Brighton Library, Art Gallery and Museum. In 1962 Faber and Faber commissioned him to write a comprehensive history of the town. It was published in 1970 to much acclaim. This new edition, published forty years after the original publication, includes a double introduction by the late Clifford Musgrave's son, Stephen Musgrave, and the editor of Victoria County History for Brighton and author of Georgian Brighton, Sue Berry. Two letters from Graham Greene to the author are also featured.

Views the Victorian novel through the prism of literary imitations that it inspired.

In early Victorian England there was intense interest in understanding the early Church as an inspiration for contemporary sanctity. This was manifested in a surge in archaeological inquiry and also in the construction of new churches using medieval models. Some Anglicans began to use a much more complicated form of ritual involving vestments, candles, and incense. This "Anglo-Catholic" movement was vehemently opposed by evangelicals and dissenters, who saw this as the vanguard of full-blown "popery." The disputed buildings, objects, and art works were regarded by one side as idolatrous and by the other as sacred and beautiful expressions of devotion. Dominic Janes seeks to understand the fierce passions that were unleashed by the contended practices and artifacts - passions that found expression in litigation, in rowdy demonstrations, and even in physical violence. During this period, Janes observes, the wider culture was preoccupied with the idea of pollution caused by improper sexuality. The Anglo-Catholics had formulated a spiritual ethic that linked goodness and beauty. Their opponents saw this visual worship as dangerously sensual. In effect, this sacred material culture was seen as a sexual fetish. The origins of this understanding, Janes shows, lay in radical circles, often in the context of the production of anti-Catholic pornography which titillated with the contemplation of images of licentious priests, nuns, and monks.