Author Talk with Ian Breckon

A story of faith, fanaticism, and the uncanny power of the imagination.

Ian Breckon recounts the revolutionary mystic Sir William Courtenay and the last battle fought on English soil...in Kent!

• Date: Wednesday 25 February
• Time: 12.30pm
• Venue: Sevenoaks Bookshop, 147 High Street, Sevenoaks, TN13 1XJ

'Mad Tom's Rising is mystery, history, thriller and horror - the historical record is assembled and reassembled, this way, that way, deftly and subtly, to create a meticulous, gripping, shimmering tale of an enigma.' Samantha Harvey, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital

'A meticulously researched book that provides a fascinating glimpse of a lost world, this is a poignant and vivid account of a motley group of country folk who fell under the spell of a delusional conman in 1838, and followed him to disaster.' Richard Francis

'Ian Breckon reveals the seething undercurrents of a period of great change. In the process we are introduced to a cast worthy of one of the great novels of the age.' Stuart Flinders

Mad Tom's Rising

The dawn of the Victorian era: the world is changing rapidly. Poverty and the workhouse cast long shadows across rural England, and a traditional way of life is coming to an end.

In the villages and fields of Kent, the discontented find an unlikely champion in John Nicholls Tom. Calling himself 'Sir William Courtenay', he appears to the local magistrates and gentry as a madman, a charlatan, or a dangerous radical. But for the labouring people he is the New Messiah, come to lead them in a revolt against the forces of oppression, and to herald the end of the world.

In May 1838 Tom's crusade ignites into bloody violence. The confrontation that follows will shock the country, and become known as the last battle ever fought on English soil.

Mad Tom's Rising presents an alternative vision of early Victorian England, as a place of mystical religious faith, riot and disturbance, surveillance and insecurity, arson and uproar. Drawing on original sources, it reconstructs the strange and astonishing events of that time, and the lives and experiences of those forever marked by them.

Ian Breckon

Ian Breckon was born and grew up in England, and currently lives in the West Country. He has worked as a novelist, teacher, university lecturer and historical researcher. Mad Tom's Rising is his first non-fiction history book.

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