Emily Brand is an author, historian and genealogist with a special interest in the history of love and sex c.1660–1837.

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Her book The Fall of the House of Byron (John Murray, 2020) is a sweeping history of the 18th century through the eyes of one notorious family. Following the fates of the poet's ancestors over three generations, it is a saga that begins in rural Nottinghamshire and plays out in the gentlemen's clubs of Georgian London, amid tempests on far-flung seas, and in the glamour of pre-revolutionary France. It was selected as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, a Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday and BBC History Magazine Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 2020 Elma Dangerfield Prize.

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Emily worked for some years as a senior editor of academic history, trade history and classic literature for the University of Oxford. Her early published work on the history of love and sex delved into courtship techniques, 18th-century brothels, and royal weddings. She has since written for national and international media including BBC History magazine, The Times, The Telegraph, the Radio Times and the Washington Post, and lectured for the World Monuments Fund, British Library, V&A Museum and National Maritime Museum.

 

In 2021 she has contributed alongside historians including Simon Schama and Bettany Hughes to What is History, Now?, an exciting collection of essays rethinking the importance of history to the modern world (edited by Helen Carr & Suzannah Lipscomb). Her essay explores 'Why Writing Family History Matters'.

 

Global pandemic permitting, she will also be taking a book tour of UK literary and history festivals to share her compelling and surprising research about the 18th-century Byron family and their circle – if you'd like her to appear at your event please get in touch!

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