We’re delighted to welcome bestselling novelist Maggie O’Farrell into our virtual bookshop on the eve of the paperback publication of Hamnet. Winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction and a Sunday Times bestseller, Hamnet was one of the most popular and highly acclaimed books of the last year.

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Two extraordinary people. A love that draws them together. A loss that threatens to tear them apart.

On a summer’s day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.

Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright. It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. Above all, it is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.