A.N. Wilson joins the Salt list with Immortal Diamond

We are very pleased to announce that Salt has acquired a major new novel by A. N. Wilson from Matthew Hamilton at The Hamilton Agency. Immortal Diamond is a masterly fictional investigation into the illusions of the Raj, tracing a trail of colonial plunder from the Treasury at Lahore to the Edwardian drawing rooms of the English elite.

The story begins in 1909 as Princess Sophia Duleep Singh – suffragette, firebrand, and daughter of the last Maharajah of the Punjab – arrives at a quiet villa in South Ascot. She carries a secret that threatens the very foundations of the British Monarchy: the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the ‘Mountain of Light’ held in the Tower of London, is a sham.

Through the eyes of three remarkable women – Sophia Duleep Singh, the proto-feminist Mary Ponsonby, and the maternal Lena Login – Wilson constructs a narrative that is part high-stakes mystery and part tragic exposure of Imperial hypocrisy. It is a subversive and deeply moving exploration of the fantasy of power.

A. N. Wilson, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an award-winning biographer and novelist, joins Salt following a distinguished career. His fiction has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Winnie and Wolf, and he remains one of our most acclaimed biographers, with definitive works on Tolstoy, C. S. Lewis, and Goethe.

Speaking of the acquisition, Wilson noted his admiration for Salt’s independence and commitment to the art of the book, calling it the ‘perfect home’ for this story of historical reckoning. Salt Director Chris Hamilton-Emery described the work as an extraordinary addition to the list, praising its wit and its status as a ‘piercing exploration’ of British history.

Immortal Diamond will be published as a Paperback Original on 8 March 2027, priced at £10.99.