C J Sansom

C.J. Sansom was a British author of historical crime fiction whose Shardlake series — featuring a hunchbacked lawyer investigating crimes in Tudor England — became one of the most celebrated and commercially successful historical fiction series of the twenty-first century. Born Christopher John Sansom in Edinburgh in 1952, he studied history at the University of Birmingham and worked as a solicitor before turning to writing full-time. His legal training and his deep knowledge of Tudor history combined to create fiction of extraordinary authenticity and narrative power. The Shardlake series — Dissolution (2003), Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation, Heartstone, Lamentation, and Tombland — follows Matthew Shardlake, a hunchbacked lawyer in the service of Thomas Cromwell and later other Tudor patrons, as he investigates murders against the turbulent backdrop of Henry VIII's England. Lamentation is set during the final months of Henry VIII's reign, as Shardlake becomes entangled in a dangerous conspiracy involving Queen Catherine Parr. Sansom's Tudor England is brilliantly realised — the politics, the religion, the social hierarchy, the smells and sounds of sixteenth-century London are all rendered with scholarly precision and novelistic vividness. Shardlake himself is one of the great characters in historical fiction — intelligent, compassionate, physically vulnerable, and morally courageous. Sansom died on 27 April 2024. The Shardlake series was adapted into a Disney+ television series. The audiobook editions of the Shardlake novels are magnificent. Sansom's books and audiobooks are essential for fans of historical fiction, Tudor history, and crime writing of the highest quality.