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Hardback, 450pp, 1980 second impression

Being the Acta domini Johannis Fastolfe, or Life and Valiant Deeds of Sir John Faustoff, or The Hundred Days War, as told by Sir John Fastolf, K.G., to his secretaries William Worcester, Stephen Scrope, Fr Brackley, Christopher Hanson, Luke Nanton, John Bussard, and Peter Basset; now first transcribed, arranged, and edited in modern spelling.

Sir John Falstaff. A name known to all. However, apart from Shakespeare's portrayal of him in three plays, little has been known about the man himself until now. Robert Nye here presents the unexpurgated memoirs of the fat knight, transcribed and edited in modern spelling. The atmosphere and texture of life in the late 14th and early 15th centuries are marvellously evoked. Falstaff stands revealed as the spirit of England. personified for surely he is the original John Bull, rival to the Gargantua and Pantagruel of Rabelais.

In one hundred chapters, covering the period from Sir John's improbable begetting to his unexpected demise, the reader learns about Falstaff when young, and the indignity suffered by him at the hands of the Duchess of Norfolk; about his belly and his rat; about how he went to war and made his name terrible to the enemy; about how he fell in love; about how he conducted the militia at the siege of Kildare; about Prince Hal; about who killed Hotspur; about Agincourt, and how Sir John was installed as a Knight of the Garter; about his friends, and his enemies; and about much, much more.

Here is England. Falstaff is a book for our times, unashamedly patriotic but far from uncritical. Robert Nye has welded his raw material into a novel worthy of its protagonist big in every sense of the word. Here is racy narrative, a fund of superb stories, a host of larger than life characters, a tapestry of the middle ages. It is funny, touching, witty, tragic, scabrous, poetic. The past becomes the present before your eyes. Falstaff pulsates with life and energy. Falstaff is a feast of a book. Falstaff is an experience you will not willingly forget.

Jacket design by Anthony Cohen based on a portrait of Anthony Quayle in the role of Falstaff by William Dobell reproduced by kind permission of The Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon.