As always, Ackroyd brings the bustle, stench and hazards of nineteenth-century London vividly to life and keeps readers on their toes until the final page
Daily Mail
A marvellously adroit tale
- Penelope Lively, Independent
Energetic and clever... <i>The Lambs of London</i> ingeniously combines two fact-based narratives and transforms them into a detective-cum-love story
Daily Telegraph
Historically animated and emotionally fervent. Ackroyd turns the past into a private phantasmagoria of loving fakes and pungent terrors
Observer
Clever, subtle and touching, often funny and always highly intelligent. A modern novel that requires a second reading - one which will be even more enjoyable and rewarding than the first
Scotsman
Mary Lamb is confined by the restrictions of domesticity: her father is losing his mind, her mother watchful and hostile. The great solace of her life is her brother Charles, an aspiring writer. It is no surprise when Mary falls for the bookseller's son, 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, a world in which a clever son will stop at nothing to impress his showman father, and no one knows quite what to believe. Ingenious and vividly alive, The Lambs of London is a poignant, gripping novel of betrayal and deceit.