Following the sad news of the passing of CJ Sansom in April 2024, Tracy Borman reflects on the historical novelist\u2019s popular Shardlake series, set in Tudor England, and how even through fiction he was able to make valuable contributions to our understanding of this historical period <\/p>
The announcement of the death of historical novelist CJ Sansom<\/a> on 27 April 2024 prompted widespread sorrow amongst his legions of fans across the world. He died, aged 71, just days before Shardlake<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0 a major new TV adaptation of his first novel, Dissolution<\/em>, starring Arthur Hughes as lawyer Matthew Shardlake and Sean Bean as his formidable master Thomas Cromwell, was released on Disney+.<\/p>\n Christopher John Sansom, better known as CJ, was the author of numerous acclaimed works, including Winter in Madrid<\/em> (2006), a spy novel set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War<\/a>, and the alternate-history thriller Dominion<\/em> (2012), which imagines a Britain that had surrendered to the Germans after Dunkirk<\/a>.<\/p>\n But it was his mystery novels set in Tudor England and featuring barrister Shardlake for which he was best known \u2013 and loved.<\/p>\n To read a Shardlake novel is to be immersed in the turbulent world of the Tudors: the cutthroat courts of Henry VIII<\/a> and his son Edward VI<\/a>, the religious and social upheaval of the Reformation<\/a>, and the sights, smells and sounds of 16th-century London.<\/p>\n A succession of seismic events, such as Henry\u2019s rapid succession of wives, his break with Rome and the sinking of the Mary Rose<\/em><\/a>, provides the backdrop to Shardlake\u2019s sleuthing. But what Sansom\u2019s novels bring so vividly to life is the often-devastating impact that these events had on the lives of the ordinary people of Tudor England.<\/p>\n His debut novel was inspired by Sansom\u2019s fascination with the Tudors<\/a> and his love of crime novels, as well as his home county of Sussex. Published in 2003, Dissolution<\/em> is set in a fictional monastery on the Sussex coast on the eve of Henry VIII\u2019s piecemeal dissolution of the monasteries<\/a>. The seventh in the series, Tombland<\/em> (2018), takes as its theme Kett\u2019s Rebellion of 1549.<\/p>\n At the time of his death, Sansom was working on an eighth, titled Ratcliff<\/em>, set in the closing year of Edward VI\u2019s reign.<\/p>\n What sets the Shardlake novels apart from most other historical fiction is the depth of research that Sansom undertook to ensure that they were as accurate and authentic as possible.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem with history \u2013 and the further back you go, the truer this is \u2013 is that there are all sorts of gaps,\u201d he once remarked<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Tudor times, information is sparse: things have single or contradictory sources. But where there are established facts, I do everything I can to insert the story around them.\u201d<\/p>\n Sansom was well qualified for that task, having read history to PhD level at the University of Birmingham before leaving academia for a career in the law. Although he observed that a novel \u201ccannot offer the accuracy you\u2019d get in an academic article<\/a>,\u201d his research for each Shardlake novel was meticulous and extensive.<\/p>\n In researching Sovereign<\/em> (2006) \u2013 the third book in the series, which is based around Henry VIII\u2019s tumultuous northern progress of 1541 \u2013 Sansom made a discovery so significant that he published an academic paper about it<\/a>. The abortive Wakefield Plot of March 1541 is often overlooked, but Sansom\u2019s research proved what a threat it was to Henry VIII\u2019s regime and how the progress (which was armed) was at least partly in response to it. Each novel also ends with an extensive bibliography and a scrupulous historical note to explain exactly how the author has interpreted the facts to serve the interests of the story.<\/p>\n Plots twist and turn and are never predictable. Many times, I have smugly identified whodunnit by the end of the first chapter, only to have my conclusions shattered by the end of the last.<\/p>\n Another mark of a great novelist is the crafting of characters that are as convincing as they are compelling. Here again, Sansom reigns supreme. Kings, queens, courtiers, lawyers, laymen and priests, rich and poor, virtuous and corrupt, famous and obscure; his characters are so startingly life-like that it feels as if they could step from the page at any moment.<\/p>\n The star of the show is, of course, Matthew Shardlake, a solitary, physically-challenged and slightly irascible lawyer: in short, the unlikeliest of heroes. Although professionally successful, his scoliosis brings him both physical and emotional pain. It also marks him as an outsider in a superstitious age that regarded people with physical disabilities as unlucky \u2013 or, in Richard III<\/a>\u2019s case, plain evil.<\/p>\n Although Sansom claimed that the character of Shardlake dropped into his head \u2018fully formed\u2019, it is tempting to see an element of the autobiographical here. Just as Charles Dickens had much in common with David Copperfield, so Sansom shares some facets with his novels\u2019 hero. Both he and Shardlake were unmarried former lawyers who specialised in representing the less privileged and were prone to bouts of depression.<\/p>\n The protagonist\u2019s jovial, handsome and unshakeably loyal sidekick, Jack Barak, is the perfect foil. The growth of their friendship is one of the most touching elements of the series. It is telling that another close friend of Shardlake\u2019s, Guy Malton, a Moorish healer turned Christian monk, is a fellow outsider in a world deeply suspicious of difference.<\/p>\n As well as evoking the Tudor past, Sansom\u2019s novels have plenty of resonance with modern-day Britain. \u201cPolitical plotting is eternal and Henry VIII inserts himself into the lives of his subjects in a way that no English monarch ever had. Spin takes on a new lease of life under Henry and Cromwell,\u201d he said<\/a>. As if to prove the point, shortly before resigning in 2019, the then-prime minister<\/a> Theresa May inaugurated a miniature library (housed in a redundant phone box) in her constituency by donating her copy of Dissolution<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n The Shardlake novels are arguably CJ Sansom\u2019s greatest legacy and, now that they have finally begun to make the transition to the screen, they are set to attract swathes of new devotees across the world. Historians spend a lot of time quibbling over the merits and dangers of historical fiction and dramatisation.<\/p>\n But, for me, novels as carefully crafted and richly authentic as Sansom\u2019s deserve to be celebrated not just for the pleasures they provide, but for the contributions they make to our understanding of the past.<\/p>\nThe spark of Sansom\u2019s historical fiction<\/h3>\n
Bringing Tudor England to life<\/h3>\n
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