The Heirs of Owain Glyndwr

The Fourth Ben Schroeder Novel

1 July 1969. The Investiture of the new Prince of Wales.

When Arianwen Hughes is arrested driving with a home-made bomb near Caernarfon Castle, her case seems hopeless.

Her brother Caradog, her husband Trevor, and their friend Dafydd are implicated in the plot, the evidence against them damning.

Ben Schroeder's reputation as a barrister is riding high after the cases of Billy Cottage (A Matter for the Jury) and Sir James Digby (And is there Honey Still for Tea?).

But defending Arianwen will be his greatest challenge yet. Trevor may hold the only key to her defence, but he is nowhere to be found...



Born in 1946, Peter Murphy graduated from Cambridge University and pursued a career in the law in England, the United States and The Hague. He practised as a barrister in London for a decade, then took up a professorship at a law school in Texas, a position he held for more than twenty years. Towards the end of that period he returned to Europe as counsel at the Yugoslavian War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague for almost a decade. In 2007 he returned to England to take up an appointment as a judge of the Crown Court. He retired as Resident Judge and Honorary Recorder of Peterborough in 2015.

Peter started writing fiction more than twenty years ago, but following his retirement from the bench he became a full-time author, often drawing on the many experiences of his former career. Two political thrillers about the American presidency: Removal and Test of Resolve were followed by eight legal thrillers in the Ben Schroeder series about a barrister practising in London in the 1960s and 1970s. Alongside those he also penned the light-hearted series of short story colllections featuring Judge Walden of Bermondsey in the 'Rumpole' tradition, based in part on his own experiences as a lawyer and judge, and recently published A Statue for Jacob, based on the true story of Jacob de Haven.

Peter passed away in September 2022.



'A thought-provoking, intriguing unmasking of court room sparring and Welsh nationalism in this novel set in the 1960's'



'After swapping his gavel for a pen, a former crown court judge has published the fourth book in his popular legal saga'



'The story illustrates and discusses effectively questions of nationalism and national identity. It is to the author's credit that this fiction sometimes reads and feels like a dramatic re-telling of a real event'



'Books to Look Forward to from No Exit Press and Oldcastle Books'



'All the details of barristerial life, the rules of ethics and evidence, the social attitudes and the courtroom procedure appropriate for the late 1960s period setting are pitch perfect ... the book raises very contemporary questions about the roots of radicalism, the motivations for terrorism and the conduct of the security services in combatting it'