A. K. Blakemore

Award-winning novelist, A. K. Blakemore brings to life her latest book: the dazzling and inventive retelling of the Peasants’ Revolt, with strikingly resonant themes of power, wealth and the common people.

This autumn, it is our privilege to be joined by A. K. Blakemore, author of the Desmond Elliott Prize-winning The Manningtree Witches and the Dylan Thomas Prize-shortlisted The Glutton. Her new novel, Doom Painting, is a dazzling and inventive retelling of the 14th-century Peasants' Revolt.

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.

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 defining 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.

Author image credit: Alice Zoo