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  • Published: 30 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781784878818
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

Dunbar

King Lear, Retold




SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.

Shakespeare’s King Lear is reimagined in Edward St Aubyn's gripping story of a media mogul who has lost control.

Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he handed over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan. But relations quickly soured, leaving him to doubt the wisdom of past decisions.

Now imprisoned in a care home in the Lake District with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills, his family is hot on his heels. Who will find him first, his beloved youngest daughter, Florence, or the tigresses Abby and Megan, so keen to divest him of his estate?

‘Malevolently enjoyable… A fable of fatherly neglect and daughterly cruelty’ Financial Times

‘Deeply affecting…and funny’ Observer

SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Time travel. Zombies. Power-hungry media moguls. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen him before: nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.

  • Published: 30 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781784878818
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

About the author

Edward St Aubyn

Edward St Aubyn was born in London. His superbly acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk (winner of the Prix Femina étranger and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize), and At Last. The series was made into a BAFTA-award winning Sky Atlantic TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role. St Aubyn is also the author of A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize), Lost for Words (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), and Dunbar, his re-imagining of King Lear for Hogarth Shakespeare.

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