Doom Painting

It is 1381. England, reeling from the Black Death and years of conflict abroad, prepares for harvest. 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 commons - loyal to the king, but not to those landowners who press to curtail their freedoms; the multitude finding common cause against the powers that threaten their livelihoods. Set over sixteen days, from Whitsuntide to Corpus Christi, Doom Painting roves across England as the men and women of the southern counties, supported by the visionary poet-priest John Ball, march to London to take their demands to the child King Richard II. Out of the revolt 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. Written in sinuous and exhilarating prose, with all the drama and tension of fated history, A.K. Blakemore‘s thrilling retelling of the Peasant‘s Revolt renders it as a definitive moment in British history. In the meeting of peasantry and nobility, new versions of England were born, and - for one bloody summer - the people of England seized control of their narrative.