Manchester historian turns her hand to crime

A University of Manchester expert on the seedier side of the Victorian entertainment industry has penned her first novel - a murder mystery set in the music halls and circuses of the 1840s.

Walking In Pimlico, by Dr Ann Featherstone, is her first venture into fiction and follows the attempts of comedian Corney Sage to escape the killer of a woman whose body he stumbles across by accident. Corney flees from his concert-room job in London's Whitechapel to a Birmingham circus and then a Shrewsbury music hall.

Dr Featherstone last year published an acclaimed book on the Victorian freakshows, peepshows and fairs documented in the journals of an obscure Victorian diarist she rediscovered in a Nottinghamshire archive. She is also credited with rediscovering a joke book that belonged to a Victorian clown called Thomas Lawrence containing 200 gags used at a 19th century circus.

A lecturer in performance history at The University of Manchester, Dr Featherstone teaches her drama students about the colourful characters who lived in the period.

She said: "Who in their right mind would pay to gawp at somebody else's misfortune? But if you think about it, perhaps television still panders to a 21 century version of this appetite for public humiliation - what after all is Big Brother or the X Factor?

"The superficial appearances of the clowns and showmen are only skin deep and any one of them might be a murderer. I hope readers will find it intriguing and fascinating - I did and had great fun writing the book."

In fact, Dr Featherstone enjoyed the experience so much, she is already working on a second novel. Walking in Pimlico is published by John Murray and costs £16.99.