The Black Prince derives from a plan Anthony Burgess made for a novel in the early 1970s, and then turned into a screenplay for a film that was never made. It’s about the life and campaigns of Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III and father of Richard II, who defeated the French at Crécy and Poitiers, founded the Order of the Garter, and died of dysentery in 1376 before he could become king.
Brought out by crowdfunded publisher Unbound, this is a weird and wonderful book on which no commercial publisher would have taken a punt. Burgess said of his planned novel: “The effect might be of the fourteenth century going on in another galaxy where language and literature had somehow got themselves into the twentieth century.” Adam Roberts recreates that effect with panoramic camera swoops over Europe, inset newsreel headlines, and stream-of-consciousness accounts of the major battles of the century (Crécy, Poitiers, Nájera). These are voiced by a whole range of characters: if you want to see medieval Europe from the perspective of a blind king of Bohemia, a dog, a chicken seller, a Cornish miner, a mercenary, the mother of Richard III, or the Black Prince himself, this is the book for you.
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