Richard Osman loves 2023 page-turner that’s ‘like Charles Dickens’ | Books | Entertainment
Richard Osman has sold millions of copies of The Thursday Murder Club series, and become one of the UK’s most reliably gripping storytellers.
But when he appeared on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show in 2024, Richard couldn’t stop talking about someone else’s writing: (Suede’s bassist and his brother) Mat Osman’s.
Specifically, The Ghost Theatre, a fever-dream of a novel set in Elizabethan London, filled with rooftop chases, bird worshippers, and a dangerously intoxicating underground theatre troupe. And according to Richard, it’s one of the most captivating books he’s ever read.
“It’s so brilliant,” he told Evans. “It couldn’t be more different from my books – but I’ll tell you the way in which it’s similar is you just cannot stop turning the pages.”
Set in 1601, The Ghost Theatre imagines a London on the cusp of catastrophe, as the plague simmers and rebellion flickers. Its heroine, Shay, is a fortune teller and falconer who reads futures in birds. She’s soon swept up in the chaotic world of Nonesuch, a famed young actor at the Blackfriars Theatre, and together they create the Ghost Theatre: an outlaw troupe that stages wild, magical plays in the secret corners of the city.
“You are immersed completely in this world and in these characters” Richard said. “There’s like a whole new religion that’s been invented, and there’s people running across the rooftops in this extraordinary theatre troupe.”
Shay and Nonesuch’s growing fame leads them into the shadowy corridors of the Elizabethan court, and eventually to the Queen herself, who demands a private prophecy that shakes the nation to its core.
What stunned Richard most wasn’t just the imagination of it all: “It’s the writing – it’s extraordinary, it’s so lyrical,” he said. “Every paragraph is like… I wish I hadn’t read it now, ‘cause I’d like to read it again. It’s like Charles Dickens suddenly came back from the dead and wrote another book – that’s what it feels like to me.”
“Some writers who have these descriptive powers, they get lost in it,” says Richard. “[But] Mat never loses sight of the story at any point. It’s amazing.”
Mat Osman, best known for his part in one of the defining Britpop bands of the ’90s, might not be who you’d expect to deliver a lush, literary epic set in plague-ravaged Elizabethan England. But as Richard pointed out, “Matt’s always been brilliant at everything he’s ever done… but I love the fact that it’s incredibly entertaining as well.”
Of course, as Richard himself admitted, he’s “slightly biased.” But that didn’t stop him from making a strong, heartfelt case for picking up the novel, especially if you’re about to go on a trip.
“If you’re starting a train journey, a plane journey or anything like that, and you’ve got a couple of hours to spare, just read the first page” he said. “If you don’t like it, by all means put it down. But you will read the second page. Then you’ll read the third.”
You don’t have to be a fan of Shakespeare or Elizabethan history to fall for it, he advocates. “I’m delighted to be here mainly as a cheerleader for a book that I absolutely adore and which I hope everyone will go and buy.”
