It is 1381. England, reeling from plague and years of conflict abroad, is a tinderbox waiting to spark. Two childhood friends ride into the town of Brentwood, Essex, where they come upon an altercation with a local Justice bent on squeezing more coin from the masses. Thus begins a rebellion of the common folk - loyal to the king, but not to those wealthy landowners who curtail their freedoms; the multitude finding cause against the powers that threaten their livelihoods.
Set over sixteen days, Doom Painting roves across England as the revolt grows and swells and the rebels march to London to take their demands to the child-king Richard II. Out of the rebellion emerges its enigmatic and charismatic leader Wat Tyler, an opportunistic and mercurial rogue whose morality is birthed by the cause, and who shapes an identity for the English which has never been lost.
A. K. Blakemore's thrilling retelling of the Peasants' Revolt renders it a definitive moment in British history. In the meeting of peasantry and nobility, new versions of England are born, and - for one bloody summer - the people of England seize control.
Genre: Historical
Set over sixteen days, Doom Painting roves across England as the revolt grows and swells and the rebels march to London to take their demands to the child-king Richard II. Out of the rebellion emerges its enigmatic and charismatic leader Wat Tyler, an opportunistic and mercurial rogue whose morality is birthed by the cause, and who shapes an identity for the English which has never been lost.
A. K. Blakemore's thrilling retelling of the Peasants' Revolt renders it a definitive moment in British history. In the meeting of peasantry and nobility, new versions of England are born, and - for one bloody summer - the people of England seize control.
Genre: Historical
Praise for this book
"An enormous achievement. A. K. Blakemore has taken a trip back to 1381 and shown us all England from the lowest peasant grubbing in the mud to the young and hapless monarch in all his fumbling insecurity... A novel so dark, so full, so brave, so brimming with life (and death) and love and pain that I found myself often putting it down just to wonder at this enormous thing, at all these lives... A big bold, brilliant, brutal, beautiful masterpiece." - Edward Carey
"A.K. Blakemore's talent is munificent, her language is munificent, and this novel is utterly munificent. Doom Painting is, undoubtedly, one of the best historical novels written in the last ten years." - Oisín Fagan
"Exquisite and urgent, Doom Painting is so much more than historical fiction. It captures within its pages both the rebelliousness of the fourteenth century and the urgent spirit of our Age... An exceptional work that everyone should read, no matter whether they consider themselves more entranced by England's past or ambitious for its future." - Annie Garthwaite
"Blakemore is a formidable talent. Few can evoke the past in such an urgent, deft way - and with Doom Painting she surely joins the first rank of historical fiction writers alongside Mantel and Tremain." - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
"Incredible. Blakemore turns the distant past into something gut-twistingly human, sexy and alive." - Alex Hyde
"Playful, violent, bloody and funny, Doom Painting makes poetry of England's great medieval peasant rebellion. As strange and wonderful as The Glutton, this book confirms A.K. Blakemore as one of the most original writers of historical fiction at work today." - Dan Jones
"Truly astonishing. Blakemore has the rare gift of capturing the beating heart of events centuries past in all their complexity and unruliness, not for a second taking an eye off the tender, the human, the exquisite. Every page buzzes with the life of it." - Rebecca Perry
"A.K. Blakemore's talent is munificent, her language is munificent, and this novel is utterly munificent. Doom Painting is, undoubtedly, one of the best historical novels written in the last ten years." - Oisín Fagan
"Exquisite and urgent, Doom Painting is so much more than historical fiction. It captures within its pages both the rebelliousness of the fourteenth century and the urgent spirit of our Age... An exceptional work that everyone should read, no matter whether they consider themselves more entranced by England's past or ambitious for its future." - Annie Garthwaite
"Blakemore is a formidable talent. Few can evoke the past in such an urgent, deft way - and with Doom Painting she surely joins the first rank of historical fiction writers alongside Mantel and Tremain." - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
"Incredible. Blakemore turns the distant past into something gut-twistingly human, sexy and alive." - Alex Hyde
"Playful, violent, bloody and funny, Doom Painting makes poetry of England's great medieval peasant rebellion. As strange and wonderful as The Glutton, this book confirms A.K. Blakemore as one of the most original writers of historical fiction at work today." - Dan Jones
"Truly astonishing. Blakemore has the rare gift of capturing the beating heart of events centuries past in all their complexity and unruliness, not for a second taking an eye off the tender, the human, the exquisite. Every page buzzes with the life of it." - Rebecca Perry
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