Four Nights in Knaresborough

Little is known about the most famous assassins in British history. In 1170, four knights left the court of Henry II. Four days later Archbishop Thomas Becket lay brutally murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. The knights fled north, holed up in Knaresborough Castle, as the country teetered on the brink of revolution, and waited there in secret for a year.

For an event that so dramatically altered British history much mystery still remains. Four Nights in Knaresborough explores just what might have happened on that day. What orders were really given to whom? Who stood to gain from the 'accident'?

Set in a medieval world, full of dirt, sweat, blood and lust, part historical drama, part political thriller, part comedy – the play brings together these elements with a modern day sensibility which has more in common with Tarantino than Cadfael.

Originally produced in 1999 at the Tricycle Theatre, directed by Richard Wilson and starring Johnny Lee Miller, this newly revised version of the script by Hollywood scriptwriter Paul Webb will be premiered in Southwark – an area saturated in Becket history – for four weeks only.