The Lambs of London
by Peter Ackroyd

At the centre of this intriguing, irresistible novel are the young Lambs - Charles, constrained by the tedium of his work as a 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 also 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 nineteenth-century drama which keeps the reader guessing right to the end.

Peter Ackroyd, the author of eleven novels, was born in London in 1949. He has written biographies of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Dickens and Blake. His historical fiction frequently draws inspiration from the lives and characters of real people from the past. He has written and presented two TV series for the BBC (Dickens and London) and is the author of London: the biography and Albion: the origins of the English Imagination. In 2003 He was awarded a CBE for services to literature.