<p><i>For as long as I talk they are commanded to set it down, every day, every word, without fear or favour or crossings out or any alteration. At the end of these one hundred days I shall have told the story of my life.</p>,/i><p>Expansive, sprawling, unruly and oversized - like his stomach and everything about him - Falstaff's memoirs take the unsuspecting reader into the world of a character so audacious that, apparently, even the Bard himself could not do him justice. Larger-than-life, irascible and still lecherous at the advanced age of eighty-one, Falstaff recounts his outrageously bawdy tales as an antidote to popular legend.</p><p>Who killed Hotspur? What really went on at the Battle of Agincourt? And what was it that made the wives of Windsor so merry? The Middle Ages come alive as we romp through history with the most entertaining of guides, in another stunning novel from the...

'By the time I have finished I think you will have to admit it. There is no man or woman alive in the world who knows more than old Pickleherring about the late Mr Shakespeare.'From a dingy attic above a brothel in Restoration London, aged actor Pickleherring tells all that's fit to know, and much that's not, about the life of the Bard. A child actor in Shakespeare's troupe, Pickleherring has heard every salacious story about the playwright's life, and is generous-spirited enough to repeat them all.Was Shakespeare ever 'in love'? Did he write his own plays? Might he have had royal blood? Upon whom did he base the character of Falstaff? What were his last words? And who was the Dark Lady of the sonnets? Pickleherring has the answers to every question ever asked about his mentor. Audacious, bawdy and jaw-droppingly ingenious, The Late Mr Shakespeare deserves a place on the same shelf as Shakespeare's plays.

Sir Walter Raleigh—soldier, explorer, adventurer, lover of Queen Elizabeth—emerges from the pages of history and myth, full-blooded, passionate, and profoundly human. After unjustly languishing for years in the Tower, Raleigh undertakes one final voyage in search of gold. On his doomed quest he contends with Spanish forces, mutiny, pirates, court intrigue, and disease, all under the shadow of the executioner's blade awaiting him back home. Along the way, he also recounts his storied rise from humble origins into the Virgin Queen's favor and court—and ultimately her bed. This powerful and action-packed novel breathes life into the most dazzling yet most enigmatic of Elizabethans.