Smith's pithy, richly detailed sixth novel revolves around an 1873 court case that gripped Victorian Britain
recently, Smith confessed that she “retained a prejudice against the form, dating back to student days, when we were inclined to think of historical novels as aesthetically and politically conservative.” But then, she continued, she came upon a story that she “knew at once had my name all over it.”
It concerns an 1873 court case that gripped Victorian Britain featuring Sir Roger Tichborne, heir to an estate in Hampshire who was lost at sea after his boat, bound for Jamaica, disappeared. But then a man turned up in Wagga Wagga, Australia, claiming to be Tichborne and, on returning to Britain, brought a civil case against the family to claim his inheritance. At the time many saw the “Tichborne claimant” for what he was: a chancer and a fraud. Yet he had a staunch defender in the form of Andrew Bogle, an ex-slave from Jamaica who had worked on the family plantation.
The narrative jumps back and forth between Touchet’s years as a young widow, who, on coming to live with the Ainsworths, falls in love with William’s first wife Frances, to her later years quietly looking down her nose at the new Mrs Ainsworth and her obsession with the Tichborne case. That is, until she accompanies Sarah to the courtroom and finds herself mesmerised by the figure of Bogle.
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