Dwarfish Charlie Boylan carries a loaded pistol into the House of Commons. A can of worms waiting to be opened, he was a police spy for nearly forty years. He wants a pension and what he knows will get it! Did he, between Waterloo and Wellington’s funeral, cause the Peterloo riot to happen? Was it Charlie who fingered the Cato Street Conspirators? Did Shelley really drown by accident? And at the opening of the Great Exhibition was it he who saved the Queen from being blown up?
With dark undertones in its revelations of the orchestrated state repression that followed the Napoleonic Wars, A Very English Agent drives a horse, well, a donkey and cart, through the early years of the nineteenth century in a rumbustious, funny, sexy, teeming novel, worthy of the times it describes.
- 'A delightful read, full of witty historical asides, and featuring a loveable, vamglorious rogue for a hero. The blend of frivolity and scholarship is very appealing.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
- 'Rathbone has chosen a fascinating period, and it is one in which he is utterly at ease. He excels in recreating the stinking streets of low-life London… Then there is the wonderful cast of this rattling yarn... It's fantastic.' THE TIMES
Paperback:
£7.99
Published 03/07/2003
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