Spin takes on a new lease of life under Henry and Cromwell.” Sansom has said, by way of explaining the resonance with modern politics: “Political plotting is eternal and Henry VIII inserts himself into the lives of his subjects in a way that no English monarch ever had. “ has a gift for characterisation, and a narrative touch that are both in their way pleasingly old-fashioned,” Naughtie adds. The comparison is apt Shardlake is a cultured man whose intellectual abilities are underpinned by a stubborn sense of both justice and empathy. On his first appearance, in Sansom’s 2003 debut Dissolution, James Naughtie hailed him as a “Tudor Morse”.
Sansom has said that Shardlake “popped into head fully formed”, though it’s tempting to draw some parallels with his creator, who is also a bachelor and whose career as a lawyer specialised in representing the less privileged, as Shardlake does at the Court of Requests. Like all the best fictional detectives, Shardlake is a solitary figure: though he’s professionally successful, his obvious disability marks him as an outsider in a superstitious age that regarded hunchbacks as unlucky, and sees him mocked publicly by courtiers and churls alike. He is an unlikely hero for a corrupt age, when those who desire advancement quickly learn to bend their principles and their beliefs to suit the prevailing wind, but it is precisely his solid decency and sense of honour that make him stand out in a world of flattery and hypocrisy. Shardlake’s sixth adventure, Lamentation, set during the final turbulent year of Henry VIII’s reign, is already receiving enthusiastic reviews. It’s a remarkable achievement for a series that has yet to enjoy the benefit of any big-name screen adaptation, and a testament to Sansom’s gift for matching a satisfying mystery plot with an enduringly sympathetic hero, backed up by a historian’s extensive and confident understanding of the period that confers authority on every passing description, whether of a privy council interrogation or an argument between women at a market stall. The past decade has brought a series of novels, biographies and documentaries, including Hilary Mantel’s two Booker-prizewinners about Thomas Cromwell and four seasons of Showtime’s bodice-ripping drama The Tudors.Īlongside all these, CJ Sansom’s Henrician crime series, featuring his hunchbacked lawyer-turned-detective Matthew Shardlake, has been quietly gaining critical acclaim and a loyal readership worldwide, such that sales now stand at some 3m copies. P erhaps it’s the obvious parallels with our own age and its propaganda, power struggles and religious divisions, but our obsession with the political and sexual intrigues of the Tudor court shows no sign of abating.
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