The Man Who Lost Himself

With skill and energy, Robyn Annear spins this unlikeliest of true stories into a compelling yarn of ambiguity and intrigue.

Tom Castro, Wagga butcher, had a jowly, pastry-like face and tipped the scales at twenty-one stone. Roger, the Tichborne heir, had a long chin, concave chest and hips that were hardly there. But when Tom declared himself to be the long-lost Roger and headed for London to claim his inheritance, not even Roger’s mother could tell them apart. After all, might not a man change his shape in a dozen years?

By 1871 there was no more notorious celebrity in Great Britain or Australia than the charismatic Claimant: the subject of songs, plays, cartoons and one of the longest-running court cases in British judicial history. But who was he? And what was his story?

‘An engrossing story, told with the wit and verve of a comic novelist.’ Barry Oakley, Bulletin