Penguin Classic History: The Road To Tyburn

Jack Sheppard, glamorous rebel, daring escapee and idol of the London mob, was one of the most legendary criminals of eighteenth-century England. When he finally met his end and was hanged in 1724, weeping girls and thronging crowds lined the road to the gallows at Tyburn.

In uncovering Jack Sheppard's enthralling story, lively and prolific historian Christopher Hibbert has drawn on contemporary newspapers, pamphlets and trial reports. He reveals a wild, dissolute, extravagant character, who, although he drank to excess, frequented the beds of prostitutes and was the "greatest prison breaker in the annals of this country", also proved to be a man of great intelligence and wit. Yet this is more than the story of one individual. It also takes us on a fascinating tour through the murky underworld of eighteenth-century London.