CJ Sansom, writer of the best-selling historic Shardlake novels, which have been tailored for TV by Disney+, has died aged 71. He handed away on April 27 after being identified with a number of myeloma in 2012.
Sansom’s writer, Pan Macmillan, introduced his dying yesterday on X and its web site.
“I shall miss him massively, not solely as a splendidly proficient author who gave pleasure to tens of millions, however as a pricey good friend of huge compassion and integrity,” mentioned his longtime editor Maria Rejt. Rejt known as Sansom an “intensely personal particular person” who at all times wished to be printed “quietly and with out fanfare”. “He labored tirelessly on every ebook, by no means eager to disappoint a single reader,” she continued.
His agent, Antony Topping, mentioned he appreciated his “joyful and piercing sense of humour”, including that Sansom most well-liked to be recognized by his novels and was unique in his private relationships.
Sansom’s Shardlake collection comprised seven novels following the titular Matthew Shardlake, a barrister with a hunchback who solves crimes whereas navigating the political intrigue and spiritual tensions below Henry VIII. The ebook collection drew on his real-life expertise as a lawyer for the deprived in Sussex, a career he was drawn to after acquiring a PhD in historical past from the College of Birmingham. The primary Shardlake novel, Dissolution, was printed in 2003 and was tailored into 10 episodes for BBC Radio 4 in 2012. He was reportedly engaged on an eighth titled Ratcliff earlier than he died.
Sansom additionally authored Dominion, an alternate historical past ebook set in Britain after a fictitious Axis triumph in World Conflict II, and Winter in Madrid, a thriller set in 1940 within the wake of the Spanish Civil Conflict.
His dying got here simply days earlier than the discharge of the TV adaptation of Shardlake on Disney+. Set in Tudor England, Arthur Hughes is main the collection alongside the likes of Anthony Boyle and Sean Bean.
At a screening of Shardlake in London forward of its premiere, government producer Stevie Lee referred to Sansom’s “excessive persistence” as she held on to the rights for greater than a decade. “I acquired extremely fortunate that I learn this ebook, and thru that acquired to know him,” she added.
Lee mentioned that Sansom “brilliantly conjures” what it was wish to dwell in Tudor England. Stephen Butchard, who’s writing the TV Model, mentioned he “had an ambition to make this [show] pretty much as good because the books.”