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The 19th century teems with big names—Queen Victoria, Dickens, Darwin—but history also advances on the shoulders of people whose fame burns briefly, or never quite catches light beyond specialist circles. In this week’s conversation, author Mark Batey walks us through three such lives: Grace Darling, Josephine Butler, and George Biddell Airy. Each illuminates a different facet of Victorian Britain: the rise of mass media, the grit of social reform, and the machinery of modern time. Grace Darling: Heroism Meets the New Mass Press In September 1838, a violent storm shattered the steamship Forfarshire on the Farne Islands. Grace Darling, the…