The Claimant

The Extraordinary Story of the Australian Butcher who said he was a Baronet

It's 1866, and from the dusty frontier town of Wagga Wagga comes a man who sets Victorian England alight – the likes of which have never been seen before or since.

A tale so preposterous that its veracity is still debated today.

Tom Castro – or was he Arthur Orton? – an obese, toothless butcher who lives in a slab-hut with his illiterate wife and children, suddenly comes forward and claims he is Roger Tichborne, the rightful Baronet of Tichborne Park, Hampshire, and head of one of England's oldest, most noble Catholic families.

Incredibly, the family matriarch agrees.