Guards! Guards!: The Play

The complete text.

This text has been adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs. The city of Ankh-Morpork is under threat from a 60 foot fire-breathing dragon, summoned by a secret society of malcontented tradesmen. Defending the city is the underpaid and undervalued City Night Watch.

The play script adaptation of the classic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, the first book in the City Watch series, part of the Discworld novels.

'This is one of Pratchett's best books. Hilarious and highly recommended' The Times

‘Possibly the funniest book ever written’ 5-star reader review

'Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.'

The city of Ankh-Morpork is in turmoil, its citizens revolting. Again.

A shadowy secret brotherhood has summoned a dragon to spread terror throughout the city, intent on overthrowing the Patrician and ruling in his place. Too bad the dragon has ideas of its own ...

It's up to Captain Sam Vimes and the ramshackle Night Watch to stop it. Only problem is, the Watch are more used to dealing with mobs than dragons.

And if they can't bring down this fire-breathing tyrant and reinstate their own, slightly less dangerous one, Ankh-Morpork might be lost. For ever...

Guards! Guards! is the first book in the City Watch series, but you can read the Discworld novels in any order.

Praise for the Discworld series:

'[Pratchett’s] spectacular inventiveness makes the Discworld series one of the perennial joys of modern fiction'Mail on Sunday

‘Pratchett is a master storyteller’ Guardian

'One of our greatest fantasists, and beyond a doubt the funniest' George R.R. Martin

'One of those rare writers who appeals to everyone’ Daily Express

‘One of the most consistently funny writers around’ Ben Aaronovitch

‘Masterful and brilliant’ Fantasy & Science Fiction

‘Pratchett uses his other world to hold up a distorting mirror to our own… he is a satirist of enormous talent ... incredibly funny ... compulsively readable'The Times

‘The best humorous English author since P.G. Wodehouse' The Sunday Telegraph

‘Nothing short of magical’ Chicago Tribune

'Consistently funny, consistently clever and consistently surprising in its twists and turns' SFXread more...