The History of Duelling. Vol. 2 (of 2)

Millingen unfolds a world where a gentleman's reputation was worth dying for, and the law looked the other way. This second volume of a Victorian history traces dueling's bloody arc across Britain and Ireland, from its Norman origins through centuries of code and consequence. The real drama lies in the cases: men of rank and reputation, pistols at dawn, honor satisfied and lives extinguished, all while courts debated whether killing a man in fair combat constituted murder. Millingen, himself a Waterloo veteran, brings clinical precision and evident fascination to these encounters between custom and criminal code. The book captures a society torn between revering masculine honor and prosecuting its violent expressions, revealing how dueling gradually succumbed to both legal pressure and shifting moral sensibilities. For readers drawn to the raw underside of polite society, this is an unflinching record of how England once sanctioned killing in the name of reputation.