The Lambs of London

A tour de force in the tradition of Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and Chatterton, a gripping novel of betrayal and deceit set in the teeming streets of 19th-century London.
At the centre of this intriguing, irresistible novel are the young Lambs: Charles, constrained by the tedium of his work as clerk at the East India Company, taking refuge in a drink or three too many while spreading his wings as a young writer, and his clever, adoring sister Mary, confined by domesticity, an ailing, dotty father and a maddening mother . . . Into their lives comes William Ireland, an ambitious 17-year-old antiquarian and bookseller, anxious not only to impress his demanding showman of a father, but to make his mark on the literary world. When Ireland turns up a document in the handwriting of Shakespeare himself, he takes Mary into his confidence - but soon scholars and actors alike are beating a path to the little bookshop in Holborn Passage.
Touching and tragic, ingenious, funny and vividly alive, this is Ackroyd at the top of his form in a masterly retelling of a 19th-century drama which keeps the reader guessing right to the end.

Peter Ackroyd (CBE) is a master of the historical novel: The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde won the Somerset Maugham Award; Hawksmoor was awarded both the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Guardian Fiction Prize; and Chatterton was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His most recent historical novels are The Clerkenwell Tales, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, Milton in America, and The Plato Papers.