CJ Sansom, novelist admired for the rigour of his bestselling Shardlake Tudor detective stories – obituary
‘I realised how like the 20th century [the Tudor age] was in its anxiety and uncertainty, even though people thought so differently then’
![Sansom: trained as a solicitor before creating the hunchbanked lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2024/04/29/TELEMMGLPICT000375667558_17143863942310_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqXgrBd0P19THPvf9738yRPf4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=350)
‘I realised how like the 20th century [the Tudor age] was in its anxiety and uncertainty, even though people thought so differently then’
Her Majesty played host to the cast of West End show Austentatious at Hampton Court Palace
As her Majesty’s project, The Reading Room, has its first festival, it's time we all ditched the drivel on TV and picked up a book instead
When she died, the novelist was working on a book in Mary’s voice. Forget Thomas Cromwell – this bullied midwit would have been ideal fodder
Mantel, who died on Thursday, wrote brilliantly about 20th-century Britain, long before the Cromwell trilogy brought her fame
Peter Kosminsky, who directed the Bafta-winning Wolf Hall, reflects on Mantel’s mischievous humour and invaluable creative guidance
Leading historian Diarmaid MacCulloch was researching a book on the Tudor statesman. Then he discovered the late novelist was, too
One of our greatest writers discusses finishing the epic Wolf Hall trilogy, her debilitating illness and the future of the monarchy
The chair of the 2009 Booker Prize judges on how the late novelist's Wolf Hall brought Henry VIII’s court to life
The 90th birthday of Capt W E Johns’s flying ace should be a cause for celebration – not cancellation
Katherine J Chen's fresh and enthralling novel Joan reimagines the servant girl who took on the English as a hardscrabble survivor
It was an editor that made William Golding's book into a masterpiece. Today's creatives should take note
The novel's 900 pages have been compressed into two and a half hours of hand-stitched drama that seamlessly captures high-level intrigue
The novelist is telling us something about England and its discontents - she knows absolutely what she is talking about
Pro-EU luvvies like the Booker-prize winning novelist have specialised in petulant remarks that only alienate people more
As Franny Moyle's The King’s Painter shows, the genius of the 16th Century artist lay in his impish spirit – and getting paid for his satire
Viewers think the latest TV version of England’s infamous wife-eater is too ‘wimpy’. But the real Henry was a shy sportsman, not a womaniser
With an adaptation of The Mirror and the Light en route, the novelist discusses bringing Henry VIII's right-hand man to the theatre
As pitiless as Austen, Compton-Burnett’s tales of 1930s Brits behaving badly 'escaped the perils of popularity'. Now, they demand to be read
In a trial that shocked the nation, the Countess of Essex and Anne Turner were found guilty of murder – but were they simply misunderstood?
"I’d like it to be something that everybody could delve into and find something that suited them and enjoy it"
As 2021 gets under way, here are four upcoming gems that should be on any serious reader’s fiction shelf