In 2006 the BBC created a 30-minute documentary entitled The Harlots Handbook based on Hallie’s book The Covent Garden Ladies which was broadcast as part of BBC4’s The Century That Made Us season. As the presenter of the documentary, Hallie took the audience on a journey through the dark streets of the Georgian underworld, one which revealed the history of the Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies and the lives of the prostitutes detailed within it.
What the Critics said about The Harlots Handbook:
This was a documentary that struck the right balance between the informative and the titillating, thoughtful yet watchable television, a valuable counterweight to the loftier philosophical programmes in BBC4’s Enlightenment season.
Victor Lewis Smith, The Evening Standard
This wickedly entertaining documentary presented by historian Hallie Rubenhold takes us behind Harris’s List to the doorways and garrets of Georgian London and shows us just how little has changed today.
Sarah Hughes, The Observer
Anybody who believes that the Georgian era was a time of gracious elegance and refinement will find their preconceptions challenged by this unapologetically prurient documentary. It has a lot of fun sending its presenter, the comely historian Hallie Rubenhold, walking down red-lit London streets in a trench coat. This is the kind of popular history sure of seducing an audience. (Chosen as the Sunday Times Pick of the Day for the 29th of June 2006, and the History Pick of the Week)
Victoria Segal, The Sunday Times