C.J.
Sansom

Christopher John “C.J.” Sansom was an English writer of crime novels.

Sansom was educated at the University of Birmingham, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he decided to retrain as a solicitor. He practised for a while in Sussex as a lawyer for the disadvantaged, before quitting in order to work full-time as a writer.

He came to prominence with his series set in the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century, whose main character is the hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake. Shardlake works on commission, initially from Thomas Cromwell in Dissolution and Dark Fire and then Thomas Cranmer in Sovereign and Revelation.

He has also written Winter in Madrid, a thriller set in Spain in 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

Dark Fire won the 2005 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, awarded by the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). Sansom himself was “Very Highly Commended” in the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library award, for the Shardlake series.

The television series “Shardlake” was adapted from the books and released by Disney+ on 1st May 2024, just 4 days after Samson’s death.