The Lambs of London

Mary Lamb is confined by the restrictions of domesticity: her father is losing his mind, her mother watchful and hostile, and their maidservant, Tizzy, elderly and infirm. The great solace of her life is her brother Charles - but he feels equally constrained by the drudgery of his work at the East India Company, taking refuge in drink while spreading his wings as a writer. Sometimes, in the evenings, they study together. Mary reads what Charles reads.

So it is no surprise that Mary should fall for the bookseller's son, seventeen-year-old antiquarian William Ireland, from whom Charles has purchased a book. But this is no ordinary book - it once belonged to William Shakespeare himself. And William Ireland, with his green eyes and his red hair, is no ordinary young man

The Lambs of London brilliantly creates an urban world of scholars and entrepreneurs, actors and theatre managers, a world in which a clever son will stop at nothing to impress his showman father, and no one knows quite what to believe. Can Mary Lamb - vulnerable, sheltered, idealistic - survive such an introduction to the many frailities of human nature?