In this gripping novel Melvyn Bragg brings an extraordinary episode in English history to fresh urgent life At the end of May 1381 the fourteen-year-old King of England had reason to be fearful the plague had returned the royal coffers were empty & a draconian poll tax was being widely evaded Yet Richard bolstered by his powerful admired mother felt secure in his God-given right to reign But within two weeks the unthinkable happened a vast force of common people invaded London led by a former soldier Walter Tyler & the radical preacher John Ball demanding freedom equality & the complete uprooting of the Church & state & for three intense violent days it looked as if they would sweep all before them Now is the Time depicts the events of the Peasants' Revolt on both a grand & intimate scale vividly portraying its central figures & telling an archetypal tale of an epic struggle between the powerful & the apparently powerless