A Street Shaken by Light: The Story of William Neilson, Volume I

Written by James Buchan

Narrated by Robin Laing

One of Britain's outstanding historical writers delivers a romantic and picaresque masterpiece that tells the fascinating story of William Neilson.

In 1720, the young William Neilson leaves Edinburgh to make his fortune in Europe, first sailing to Rotterdam and then on foot to Paris, where he meets and is immediately employed by the banker John Law. A day later he is in the Bastille, but not before he has encountered a young woman of surpassing beauty to whom Neilson will be devoted for the rest of his life.

Imprisoned in the Bastille, he has no possibility of seeing or communicating with his beloved. When at last he recovers his freedom, he is despatched at once to sea, bound for the Indies. He will be shipwrecked, become an equerry on the Île-de-France, anon command a disorderly legion in Persia, become a linguist able to hold his own in diplomatic and mercantile circles, all the while anticipating a summons from the Stuart king in exile in Rome, until he is sent back to France, and thence to Scotland in the service of the Young Pretender.

This is brilliant, irresistibly entertaining fiction. A whole world of adventure and romance comes alive in the hands of one of our most ingenious storytellers, one of our finest writers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Nov 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781004110636

James Buchan

James Buchan is a novelist and critic. He is the author of The Persian Bride, a New York Times Notable Book, as well as Frozen Desire, an examination of money that received the Duff Cooper Prize. He has also won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. Buchan is a contributor to the New York Times Book Review and the New York Observer, and a former foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. He lives in Norfolk, England.