Radical Love

Forget Bridgerton. Neil Blackmore's Radical Love give us the people of Regency England and its people as they really were; brutally intolerant, scarred by slavery, marred by oppression and social injustice. Don't look for heroes here - look for life as it's really lived, people as they really are.

ANNIE GARTHWAITE, author of Cecily

Neil Blackmore re-imagines an astounding story of gay men in London 200 years ago and under the pain of their betrayal and injustice, he uncovers loyalty and above all, love. I relished every page.

SIR IAN MCKELLEN

Radical Love is both a searing portrayal of love and obsession, and breathtaking in its depiction of the brutality and hypocrisy of prejudice, all told in sharp, beautiful prose. An unforgettable book.

ELIZABETH LEE, author of Cunning Women

I was staggered by this book; one of the boldest novelistic explorations of desire I have read in some time. Frighteningly prescient, it shines a light on the world-making possibilities of erotic transgression and the violence that so often comes in its wake.

KEIRAN GODDARD, author of Hourglass

Utterly compelling. So beautifully written, so many twists and turns and achingly sad moments where I gasped aloud. I haven't read a novel that's tugged at my heartstrings as much as this since John Boyne's The Heart's Invisible Furies. A must-read ... I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come.

JOHN MARRS

Blackmore has taken the historical facts and created an imaginative, layered, clever story that explores male desire in an intolerant time. With wit and aplomb he performed a similar trick in The Dangerous Kingdom of Love, riffing on the gay life of the polymath Francis Bacon. Radical Love confirms Blackmore as being one of the most original voices in historical fiction today.

ANTONIA SENIOR, The Times

A page-turner

MARIANKA SWAIN, The Telegraph

Full of urgent questions about individual and collective freedoms, and the writing of history...Compellingly real.

Daily Mail

A tale of courage and survival, richly imagined and full of pitch-perfect period detail and sly wit.

The Bookseller

A complex, thought-provoking tale, and a must-read for anyone seeking to explore the intersections of love, resistance, and the triumph of the human spirit.

Buzz Listings

A celebration of the erotic lives of long-dead gay Londoners and a lament for past persecutions, Radical Love is a powerful story of desire flourishing amid danger.

NICK RENNISON, The Sunday Times

Blunt, raw and unapologetically sexual, Radical Love is a story of human flaws, the dangers of both honesty and deception, and idealism in the face of cruel reality.

The Herald

Holding up a lens to a 19th century existence while asking uncomfortable questions of our own times, it explores how a high price must be paid in the pursuit of love.

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