The Devil’s Acre by Matthew Plampin

Quite an enjoyable read about a gun factory in south London in the nineteenth century. The novel has a few historical persons in it (Lord Palmerston, Samuel Colt and Charles Dickens) so has quite an interesting context. But generally it is just about different people beating each other up, often for fairly spurious reasons. Apparently that is what one did in nineteenth century London, leaving a bit of time of course for sleeping with servant girls and wandering through the slums. Definitely a boys book and not very high brow but quite entertaining.