Mid-Georgian Britain was a period of both elegance and desperation. As the middle and upper classes enjoyed their wealth with an increasing range of consumer goods, the poor endured debtor's prison and an increasing number of crimes with the death penalty. This, the latest addition to the growing "Living Histories Series", charts the growth of the empire and looks at the growing importance of London as a capital city where the rich and poor rubbed shoulders. Jacqueline Riding creates a vivid portrait of the daily reality of life for a middle-class family in this age of growing affluence.

This was the five-year war that made America a nation. Indeed President Barack Obama referred to it in his Inaugural Address; and every American child is steeped in its history. But all too often the fog of myth shrouds the reality from all sides of the conflict. In these pages, the path to war is starkly documented by British caricatures of politicians and generals, for the most part favourable to the Colonists. For George III, Lord North and Britain the war itself was a disaster, but one which need not have happened. The problem of coping with a country 5,000 miles away with a tradition of representative government, a free press and a spirit of independence were just too much. But they, together with Generals Howe, Burgoyne, Cornwallis and others, were mercilessly lampooned. Washington, the hero, is spared, although there are surprising and dark elements to the American victory illustrated here. Kenneth Baker has used contemporary material, not the romantic patriotic pictures of the 19th Century. He has drawn upon his own experiences of high politics, and his personal collection of caricatures, as well as the libraries and historical societies of the East Coast. These provide vivid and memorable images made at the very time that the Americans and French were fighting the British and Germans on their road to victory.

Prostitute and poetess, fallen woman and society wit, Laetitia Pilkington spent her life as close to fame as she was near to ruin. Favoured by, among others, the celebrated Jonathan Swift, she was divorced by her husband after being exposed as an adulteress. In London, she survived through her humour and her intelligence - and her skilful use of scandal - on the very fringes of respectability. Norma Clarke's hugely rich and enjoyable biography is the story of celebrity, sex and literature in the early eighteenth century. Above all, it brings to life a woman who embodied the scandal, energy and sadness of a time when literature, gossip and the lives they described were inseparable.

George III enjoyed one of the longest reigns (1760-1820) in English history, but his reputation fluctuated throughout the sixty years, and its ups and downs were charted with unprecedented candour and wit by some of the great caricaturists. Here, Kenneth Baker draws on his own extensive experience of high politics as well as his personal collection of caricatures to give us a fascinating vision of how the English saw their king. Many of these amusing, often irreverent images have not been published before and they provide a new dimension to the story of one of the nation's most well known but least understood monarchs.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) thrust himself into world history, on the eve of his 39th birthday in January 1776, rousing the North American colonies to break with Britain. His hope was of an independent republic that would act as a democratic beacon to old Europe. Paine's stirring language, in a series of 16 pamphlets entitled "The Crisis", got him appointed secretary of the Congressional committee on foreign affairs, but also got him indicted for treason back in England in 1787. Paine escaped to Paris, where he was made an honorary French citizen. He was elected to the Revolutionary Convention in September, 1792, but when the Revolutionary moderates fell out of favour and the Terror ensued, Paine was imprisoned. After Robespierre's fall, he was released at the request of one of the American founding fathers James Madison, then minister to France, who claimed Paine as an American citizen.

Thomas Paine is one of the greatest political advocates in history. "Declaration of the Rights of Man", first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the uprising of the French people, Paine's text is a passionate defence of man's inalienable rights. In "Rights of Man", Paine argues against monarchy and outlines the elements of a successful republic, including public education, pensions and relief of the poor and unemployed, all financed by income tax. Since its publication, "Rights of Man" has been celebrated, criticized, maligned and suppressed but here the polemicist and commentator Christopher Hitchens marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness. Above all, Hitchens demonstrates how Thomas Paine's book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the first democratic republic, whose revolution is the only example that still speaks to us: the United States of America.