The man who lost himself - Robyn Annear

All through the summer of 1874, The Times devoted an entire page - six tight-packed columns - every day to the progress of the great Tichborne trial, the longest-running and most mesmerising legal trial of the 19th century. The story of the man at the centre of it all they called the Tichborne Claimant. He called himself Sir Roger Tichborne, long-lost heir to a baronetcy and vast estates in Hampshire, a man who had disappeared at sea in 1854, apparently emerging from the Australian bush 12 years later - ten stone heavier, a butcher by profession and having forgotten how to speak his native French.

Yet not even Roger's mother could tell them apart when called upon to verify his identity in a Paris hotel room: 'Oh, my dear Roger, is it you?' she had crooned as she cradled his head in her bony arms. After all, a man might change his shape in a dozen years. But could this uncouth colonial really be Sir Roger? That question would take a full year in court, inquiries across three continents, and more than a million pages of evidence to settle. And even then . . .

Throughout the civilised world, the Tichborne case was on everyone's lips, the hottest gossip of its day. The Claimant was everywhere - not just in the newspapers or as the subject of songs, plays and cartoons, but making his case in theatres up and down the country, smirking out of postcards, even embroidered in profile on the toes of bedroom slippers. There was no more notorious celebrity in Britain or Australia than the charismatic claimant. But who was he, really? Did he even know?

With the skill and energy of the born storyteller, Robyn Annear spins a compelling yarn of ambiguity and intrigue. The affair of the Tichborne claimant resonates across a century and a half with questions - of identity, loss and the nature of truth - that remain piercingly relevant even today.