Newspaper and magazine gossip is one of the great, uncelebrated British obsessions, much denounced and much devoured. This is the first book to relate the history of gossip in both the British and American press over the past three centuries.
Roger Wilkes takes us on a roller-coaster ride from Regency London, where muckraking scandal sheets were hawked in the streets, to Blair's Britain where red-top tabloids promote tittle-tattle to satisfy the appetites of millions of people every day.
In this invigorating account we meet gossip luminaries such as Daniel Defoe; Joseph Addison and Richard Steele who founded the 'Tatler' and the 'Spectator'; Walter Winchell, whose column in New York was the first to expose Frank Sinatra's Mafia links; and Tom Driberg, author for many years of the William Hickey column in the 'Daily Express'.
'Scandal' takes its readers behind the scenes to look at the mechanisms that disseminate gossip and the power and influence that it continues to exert.
