In this well-researched and well-written book, Rohan McWilliam has produced an entertaining and wide-ranging account of a case that aroused widespread interest in mid-Victorian Britain but that, at least until the 1998 film The Tichborne Claimant, scarcely gets more than passing reference today. It is one of the strengths of the book that it takes the reader beyond the narrow confines of the case itself and sets the claimant and his case in a broader sociopolitical and cultural context and in so doing brings out the wider significance of the popular movement that grew up around such an unlikely character.

Roger Tichborne, heir to the Tichborne estate, had been presumed dead, drowned when the ship bringing him back from South America was lost at sea. Some ten years later his mother, who had never accepted that her son was dead, received a letter from a Sydney lawyer claiming that her son was alive and living as a butcher in Wagga Wagga, Australia. When the claimant visited Lady Tichborne in Paris, she “recognized” him immediately, despite the fact that, unlike her slim, sharp-featured, dark-haired, and French-speaking son, the Claimant was fat, round faced with light brown hair, and monolingual. His ignorance of key events in his “own” earlier life and discrepancies between his account of his time in South America and what was known of Roger Tichborne's movements there did not prevent him from mounting a claim that was eventually heard in the Court of Common Pleas in 1871. The trial became a cause célèbre, lasting over a hundred days, including a twenty-two-day cross-examination by Sir John Coleridge and an eighteen-day summing up by the judge, Sir Alexander Cockburn. The jury decided against the claimant who was subsequently charged with perjury. After a tempestuous trial, during which the behavior of the defense counsel, Edward Kenealy, was so aggressive that it led to his disbarment, Arthur Orton (the claimant) was found guilty and sentenced to fourteen years of hard labor. Released after ten years, Orton took his story to the music halls and circuses but with limited success. He died in poverty in 1898 but protesting to the last that he was Sir Roger Tichborne.

It is unsurprising that the Tichborne case is not mentioned by legal historians. The case itself was not important in terms of the issues that it raised, and McWilliam's detailed account, although interesting in itself, does nothing to challenge this judgment. The fact that it led to the passing of the False Personation Act is worthy of note, but, as McWilliam argues, the significance of the trial lies in its political and social impact. McWilliam makes some bold claims for the former, suggesting that the “Tichborne agitation demonstrates … considerable continuity of radicalism” (232) and that “the Tichborne movement represents the last phase of a radical argument” (237). Further, he argues that support for the claimant was not dissimilar from the support given to Queen Caroline in 1820. While there is evidence of popular support, including the Magna Charta Association, subscriptions to his defense fund, the endorsement of Thomas Wright, and several well-attended meetings in Grimsby town hall and Millwall among other places, it is difficult to see support being on a par with, say, that for Garibaldi when he toured Britain in the 1860s. Similarly, the comparison with the Queen Caroline affair underestimates the breadth of support for a much-maligned royal and exaggerates the extent and nature of support for the claimant. Indeed, the particular circumstances surrounding the electoral success of his champion and former defense lawyer, the eccentricity of Kenealy himself, and the rapid collapse of the movement suggest that it was a more shallow-rooted phenomenon, albeit one through which popular anxieties and aspirations could be expressed.

McWilliam's greatest strength lies in his analysis of the Tichborne case in relation to the popular culture of the day. The legal profession was not held in the highest of regard. There was a suspicion that legal processes were obscure and protracted for the benefit of lawyers rather than their clients and that it was difficult for an ordinary man to get justice. Here, in the Tichborne case, was a variation on the theme so skillfully played by Dickens in Bleak House, but more than that the case lent itself to the dominant melodramatic expression of the age. It gave rise to several melodramas, such as The Lost Heir and the Wreck of the Bella, which were produced in the immediate aftermath of the civil trial. But more than this the life of the claimant and its representation, particularly in the popular and radical press, were living melodrama. The claimant could be construed in a variety of ways: the poor man denied justice, the honest Englishmen enjoying the pleasures of life, an exotic figure from a colonial background, and even as a blackmailer, while the dowager could be interpreted as the wronged woman, the mother who recognized a son who was denounced and ill-treated by others. As with other well-known public figures, what people made of the claimant was more important than what he was in himself. All in all McWilliam has written an interesting and thought-provoking book that will appeal not simply to historians of varying specialisms, who will find some challenging claims with which to take issue, but also to a wider audience who will enjoy a fascinating story well told, a tale that throws light on many aspects of Victorian society.