Hello everyone, it's me, Maddie. I am back. Well, not quite. I will be back on the pod very soon. But in the meantime, if you've missed your fix of Anthony and me together, you can now catch us live on stage at Conway Hall in London on the 7th of May. There we'll be discussing my brand new book,

Hoax, Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment, out that very same day. We'll be discovering

how fake news is nothing new, chatting about what it's like to spend time in the darker side

of the Georgian world, and meeting the three extraordinary, bizarre and

often frightening characters at the heart of the book. Cops of hoax will be available on the

night, which I'll be signing after the show and hopefully chatting to as many of you as possible.

So get your tickets now. The link is in the show notes. You can go to the Conway Hall website

or follow the link in my Instagram bio. I'm so excited about this book and I just can't wait to

share it with you all. Do come along. It is going to be the most fantastic evening. See you there.

Death was no stranger in 18th century London.

It peered from the city's heaped graveyards,

swung with the heads of traitors from the heights of Temple Bar, and drifted through alleyways with the fog.

And yet, in the wet, colourless January of 1762,

something happened that made even this hardened city stop and shiver.

Because one night, at the ragged edge of Smithfield,

Londoners became convinced that the veil between the living and the dead had finally torn.

The story began as whispers.

Scratches in the walls of a narrow house in Cock Lane, strange knocks in the dark, a trembling girl in a white nightcap, claiming nightly communion with a ghost. And in a city hungry for marvels,

the tale didn't spread so much as detonate. Soon butcher and bishop, gossipmonger and grand-darm,

all pressed shoulder to shoulder

in the filthy stairwell of that crooked little house,

desperate for a glimpse into the beyond.

...