Shardlake: Heartstone

An enthralling BBC Radio 4 full-cast adaptation of the fifth novel in C. J. Sansom’s bestselling Tudor crime series, featuring lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake

Summer, 1545, and England is preparing for war. Facing imminent invasion by the French fleet, King Henry VIII has mustered a huge army at Portsmouth.

Though no soldier, Matthew Shardlake also finds himself dispatched there. Queen Catherine Parr has asked him to take on a case involving the ‘monstrous wrongs’ allegedly committed by cloth merchant Sir Nicholas Hobbey against his young ward, Hugh Curteys.

Shardlake also has another, more personal mission – to discover the truth about Ellen Fettiplace, a young woman he has befriended in Bedlam. She refuses to speak about the traumatic events that led to her incarceration almost twenty years ago, and Shardlake believes her family may hold the answers.

As he and his assistant Jack Barak pursue their investigations, they uncover secrets, lies and sinister crimes, and are reunited with both an old friend and an old enemy. Events come to their dramatic climax on board the King’s most famous warship: the Mary Rose...

Justin Salinger stars as Shardlake, with Bryan Dick as Barak, in this heart-stopping penultimate instalment of the ‘Shardlake’ series.

Duration: 2 hours 20 mins approx.