Benjamin Rudge: A Tale of the London Riots of '11

Set amidst the London riots of 2011, Benjamin Rudge is a story of society’s concept of what constitutes right and wrong, beginning with a protest about the shooting by police of a man suspected to be engaged in crime and going on to involve looting, theft, arson and murder. Throughout the course of the novel, we meet absent and disengaged fathers, police officers who question their role in modern communities, politicians who seek to apportion blame, residents wishing only to protect their homes and their livelihoods and the varying agendas of the rioters.   As the mobs rampage through the streets and London erupts into chaos, Benjamin Rudge, the autistic son of a single mother, struggles to make sense of what is happening around him.   With dialogue and events taken from those involved at the time, Benjamin Rudge presents a disturbing picture of a country where the rule of law and order is forsaken.    The idea for the story was suggested, originally, by the author’s re-reading of Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, which was set during the Gordon riots of 1780, and came to fruition through his reading of Michael Matthews’s account, The Riots, of the experiences of police officers on the front line during the riots and the interviews conducted by the Guardian newspaper with the rioters themselves, Reading the Riots.