Comment from the book world in September 2024

‘It's difficult, perhaps impossible, to write a character well in the past who is not a projection back of modern sensibilities. My defence would be that the 16th century was the time when rational, sceptical inquiry was beginning. This was the age of the humanists: we're leaving medieval thought patterns behind. I'm not saying a man like Shardlake did exist then, but he could have, when even 20 years earlier he couldn't. That's enough for me...

I find legal practice endlessly interesting. It existed then and now, so it provides a point of contact for readers. And it offers a way into any number of mysteries, and puts Shardlake in the way of an endless variety of characters.'

C J Sansom, who died in April and was the author of the seven-volume Shardlake series, Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation, Heartstone, Lamentation and Tombland, and Dominion and Winter in Madrid, in the Guardian.