‘I have hanged more men for what they have written than for what they have done.’
This quote from Richard Topcliffe, Queen Elizabeth I’s most savage enforcer, goes straight to the heart of the world that surrounds Tom Wickham – a stable boy who, by the circumstances of his birth, becomes young William Shakespeare’s closest friend.
Warwickshire was one of the last Catholic outposts of Tudor England. History is written by the victors, but this is a story of a torn and bloody country as seen through the tear-stained eyes of the vanquished. The layers of Tom and Will’s turbulent environment are peeled back, revealing passion, love and desire fighting for oxygen on the face of a spiralling mountain of fear and retribution.