In the HCV’s first in-person author talk of 2024, Dr Yves Rees will be in-conversation with Dr Alecia Simmonds, award-winning historian and author of Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law (La Trobe University Press, 2023).

Courting is a history of love turned sour: the story of jilted lovers who claimed legal compensation for “breach of promise to marry”. In this compelling account of courtroom drama, Simmonds asks big questions about the ethics of love and the role of law in our private lives. Described by Anne Summers as “enthralling and compelling”, Courting follows Simmonds’s debut Wild Man, which won the 2016 Davitt Prize for best nonfiction crime writing.