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Julian Barnes’s Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel is based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s extraordinary real-life fight for justice.

‘Julian Barnes... has taken the bones of a long-dead history and imbued them with vivid and memorable life’

Observer

Arthur & George is based on the true story of two men. One is Arthur Conan Doyle, the other is George Edalji, a solicitor from Birmingham. Their nineteenth-century lives are worlds and miles apart, until a series of shocking events brings them together.

In dubious circumstances, George is found guilty of harming animals and is sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude – a future of ignominious obscurity. However, when Arthur, who is now one of the most famous men in the land as creator of Sherlock Holmes, hears of this racist miscarriage of justice he decides to clear George’s name...

Told against the backdrop of Arthur’s family life – his own passionate affair with the woman who was to become the second Lady Conan Doyle and his wife’s lengthy battle with TB – this extraordinary novel is a dazzling exercise in detection.

Julian Barnes has written ten novels and received many awards including the Somerset Maugham Award for Metroland and three Booker Prize nominations for Arthur & George, Flaubert's Parrot and England, England.

As well as Love, etc. and A history of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, he has written two books of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Table, two collections of essays and a collection of writings about cookery.

Julian Barnes was born in 1946 in Leicester and was educated at the City of London School and at Magdalen College Oxford, studying modern languages. After graduating with honours he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. In 1977 he became a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman and the New Review and then later as a television critic for the New Statesman and the Observer.

Julian Barnes writes crime novels under the pseudonym of Dan Kavanagh and currently lives in London where he continues to write.

Nigel Anthony has appeared many times on television in series such as Wycliffe, Casualty and Coronation Street, while on stage his credits include How the Other Half Loves, Sick Dictators and Ghosts. He has worked with Alan Ayckbourn and the RSC, and he is best known for his extensive broadcasts for BBC Radio, as a leading actor, and for countless narrations and voiceovers.