An exploration of scribal news, which played a major part in the topical reporting of political developments in Britain during the 17th and 18th centuries

• Evaluates its significance, which has long been overshadowed by the seemingly inevitable rise of print media
• Builds on recent research that critiqued assumptions about the superiority of print
• Seeks to explore the relationship between manuscript news and politics in Britain from c. 1660-1760 in more detail and on a broad scale

Robin Eagles is editor of the House of Lords 1660–1832 section at the History of Parliament. He was one of the principal contributors to The History of Parliament: The Lords 1660–1715 (2016) and is now overseeing the next part of the project covering 1715–90. He is the author of Francophilia in English Society, 1748–1815 (2000), has published an edition of The Diaries of John Wilkes,1770–1797 (2014) and was co-editor with Coleman Dennehy of Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, and His World: Restoration Court, Politics and Diplomacy (2020).

Michael Schaich is deputy director of the German Historical Institute London and teaches early modern history at the University of Munich. He specialises in 17th- and 18th-century British and German history. Among his most recent publications are two volumes of collected essays: (with Andreas Gestrich), The Hanoverian Succession: Dynastic Politics and Monarchical Culture (2015) and (with Matthias Pohlig), The War of the Spanish Succession: New Perspectives (2018). He is currently working on the transmission of information from London to various German courts in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.