Enter, left, the latest, ball-bubblingly exciting instalment in what literally nobody is calling Jem Roberts’ “OF” series, or perhaps “THINGS OF THINGS” – I find myself simmeringly proud to theatrically introduce…
As with the genesis of Tales of Britain, it’s transparently simple – when the need for such a book arose, I honestly couldn’t find an anthology of the original texts Shakespeare drew his plots from, and so it seemed reasonable to create one, based on available resources. My researches brought up centuries of terribly cerebral analysis of the play’s sources, but nothing quite like what I had in mind – all the most exciting raw material, freshly edited and spruced up, with an all-new gag-packed but mind-expanding introduction from me, just as with every volume of Histories of Britain – and all then performed in full (yes, with all the voices) for audiobook.
At the risk of pre-empting too much of the lengthy, detailed and uncharacteristically personal introduction I’ve written for this collection of scintillating texts, my Shakespeare fandom extends almost as far back as my Real Ghostbusters one does.
From the first time I joined a gaggle of fellow Ludlow School kids at the castle to be extras in the Ludlow Festival’s 1991 production of Macbeth (wounded boy soldiers a speciality), even before I could say that I knew even a fraction of the Shakespearian oeuvre, I found myself smitten. I requested a trip to Stratford on Avon as my birthday treat two years running, and only recently returned at the start of this summer, over 30 years later, to soak up inspiration for Muses of Fire, and take a few snaps to add to the manuscript.
Studying English Lit (and Film & TV) at university, I felt it was my duty to try and push the entire Complete Works into my student brain – only a few making me go a bit cross-eyed – and to this day, throughout performances of Unrehearsed Theatre and so on, I have remained a diehard Shakespeare lover… although, as the introduction suggests, anything but a brainless disciple. Even the greatest artists have their off-days.
I’ll be shameless enough to offer a glimpse of our Unrehearsed Lear from 2018 – my 40th birthday present, performed in the sunshine by the Shakespeare bust in Bath’s Royal Victoria Park…
At the turn of the millennium, after I tragically just missed getting my First in English Literature, Film & TV from Aberystwyth by the teeniest tiniest hair’s breadth (honestly Mum), I suppose I faced a clear choice: to plough my hard-won education back into academia, to teach or lecture or write academic papers… or, on the other hand, to get on with trying to sell the fruits of my labours commercially. The fact that I was editing an international Nintendo Game Boy Color magazine only a few weeks later probably makes it clear which path I then chose, but what a glorious pleasure it is to finally be able to unite two passions together in this way at last… and to hopefully… please lord, after months of hard work… to make it a commercial success.
Many millions the world over adore Shakespeare, and this is a unique celebration of the nitty gritty of his adapting/writing process – just the kind of publication I would want to spend good money on myself, had I not created it.
Perfecting the text, the introduction and the audio has taken me throughout the months of 2026’s long hot summer, and numerous camping trips, and I’m more proud of the results than any of the Plummie Books creations I have edited and recorded so far.
From the very start, the appeal of Histories of Britain was for me to bring these long-dead voices back to life, through my performance, but also back in a totally new publication, there in punters’ hands. This sidebar to the ongoing Histories of Britain project (I’m currently perfecting my Wiltshire burr for Volume V, William of Malmesbury) comes from precisely the same place, but as with the campaigning passion which launched Tales of Britain, I strongly feel this new accompaniment to the greatest oeuvre of writing in English history has been constructed entirely from the texts of incredible ancient best-sellers which really deserve to be heard afresh, in the 21st century. These are the stories that inspired the greatest writer of all time, who wouldn’t want to take the time to read (or hear) them in a fresh light?
(As ever, the audiobook is snarled up in an Audible traffic jam, hopefully live any day –or even minute – now.)
One way or another, the rest of 2026 is going to be a particularly dizzying do-si-do of disparate publishing antics, print and audio, but to draw back the curtain on the book-heavy season with this fascinating treasury of crucial classical texts, including the most up-to-date literary thought on the origins of every single play that this William Shakespeare bloke ever wrote, is one of the greatest pleasures of my own perhaps arguably slightly less celebrated writing career.
And as the man wrote…
A beggar’s book outworths a noble’s blood…
