Overview

England, 1460: The War of the Roses. Rival factions - Lancastrians and Yorkists - are hacking each other to death in a conflict that only the English could name after a beautifully-scented flower. It's not an ideal climate for tourists - but three exotic travellers from the Far East are not here for pleasure. They've come to find a missing kinsman. The English, however, are truly strange. Most of the indigenous population are of the cowed peasant variety whilst any noble who can't trace his ancestry to Norman Conquest isn't, really, an awfully nice chap. In between battles of the most astonishing brutality they convey respects instead of affection, make love strangely (and briefly) and amuse themselves by playing a game with an inflated bladder that is in everyway a war except it's called 'footie'. The Indians think they're mad. They also have this horrible suspicion that one day they will rule the world... A wonderfully offbeat take on medieval England at its most brutal and savage, KINGS OF ALBION snatches history, imbues it with the spirit of Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad, turns it on its head, invites scintillating speculation and, best of all, renders it into a fabulously readable novel.

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Reviews

'Julian Rathbone's follow up to the bestselling LAST ENGLISH KING is a hugely enjoyable amble into a most gruesome period of history' THE TIMES 'The Wars of the Roses never seemed so strange - or so real ... The result is a historical novel of charm and intelligence' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'A superb adventure story. The battle scenes combine excitement with an overwhelming squalor, and there are moments of real tragedy and pathos' INDEPENDENT

No doubt hoping to extend the extravagant sweep-of-history-on-the-road theme of his previous novel (The Last English King, 1999), but falling short, Rathbone shifts to the Wars of the Roses, and a group of travelers from India who arrive just in time to be in the thick of the intrigue. In 1459, the disfigured but widely traveled Arab trader Ali, already pushing 60, agrees to deliver a packet from a mysterious, soon-dead stranger he meets in an English inn to the royal family of Vijayanagara in southern India. Ali's success earns him a return to the cold and rain of Albion, but this time with a prince of the family and his retinue in tow. The mission now: to track down the prince's brother, long estranged and believed to be practicing a secret, forbidden religion somewhere in the north. As they head west, Ali discovers that the monk in their party is actually a sensuous young woman he met briefly before leaving India. Later, Uma seduces him in a Cairo bathhouse, and adds a teenaged English nobleman to her list of conquests as they prepare to cross the English Channel. The boy, Eddie, is one of those plotting to overthrow the king of England; finding a hostile reception when Ali and company make it to London, he is forced to flee. Ali and the others get caught up in the civil war as well, with the prince shut up in the Tower of London and Ali and Uma leaving town without him. When Ali falls ill and stops in a monastery to recuperate, Uma keeps going, looking for Eddie, but she's thrown in prison, too, just as the two sides begin their series of bloody battles. Eventually, she finds her hot-blooded boy, and the prince finds his brother-but these reunions aren't what they've been expecting. The rambling seems more travelogue than novel, including, as it does, everything from theology to weather reports, and the notion of strangers in a strange land never quite catches fire. (Kirkus Reviews)

Rathbone's latest novel is set in the middle of the last millennium and follows three travellers - a Prince, a mendicant and a beautiful lady dressed mainly as a monk - as they set out from from a highly civilized land in south-west India on a long, dangerous journey to Ingorland, where the Wars of the Roses are raging. The travellers have three objectives: to find a lost brother, discover the secrets of Ingorland's latest military technology, and generally further their search for the 'perfect society'. Their odyssey brings more discoveries than they expect, including the full extent of Ingorland's barbarity and bellicosity. Outraged by the incomprehensible laws and squalor in which most of the Inglisshe live, and plagued by bad weather, the travellers are permanently cold and wet. Worst of all, the sun never shines. But as they travel, sometimes together, sometimes separately, time passes. With the arrival of spring, beauty appears: blossoming trees, grass starred with tiny, exquisite flowers. Occasionally the barbarians show kindness, surprising erudition and scholarship to stimulate flagging minds. The story, told in several voices, has the hypnotic quality of Scheherazade's or the Ancient Mariner's tales. A fabulous, sagacious novel in which the words flow like liquid silver. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Julian Rathbone was the author of many highly-acclaimed novels. Two of which (KING FISHER LIVES and JOSEPH) were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He died in February 2008.

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