Modern Great: CJ Sansom

Brook and Sarah discuss modern great CJ Sansom, author of the Shardlake historical mystery series.

Discussed and mentioned

Dissolution (2003) CJ Sansom

Winter in Madrid (2006) CJ Sansom

Dominion (2012) CJ Sansom

Sovereign (2006) CJ Sansom

“A life in books: CJ Sansom” (November 15, 2010) Sarah Crown in The Guardian

“CJ Sansom, author of the Shardlake novels, dies aged 71” (April 29, 2024) Lucy Knight in The Guardian

“My nightmare of a Nazi Britain” (October 19, 2012) CJ Sansom in The Guardian

“Top author reveals bullying ordeal at Edinburgh private school” (May 6, 2018) The Scotsman

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Transcript

This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.

Sarah	Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah.
Brook	And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery.
Sarah	Hi Brook.
Brook	Hi Sarah, today we’re going to discuss an author that you actually introduced me to, and he falls into the category of what we call on Clued in Mystery a modern great.
Sarah	That’s right. Today we are going to discuss CJ Sansom, who, I mean, we’ll get into some detail about him, but he’s most well known for his Shardlake historical mystery series.
Sarah	So I’ll give a little introduction to him and then ah we can get into some detail. Just a word of warning, there is going to be a reference to suicide at some point today. And so if that’s something that you don’t want to hear about, then um you can give this episode a mess.
Sarah	Christopher John Sansom was born in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland to a Scottish mother and an English father. He studied history at University of Birmingham and after completing a PhD, earned a law degree. His law practice focused on serving the underdog.
Sarah	Sansom drew on both history and law to write Dissolution, which was published in 2003. In it, he introduced readers to Tudor England’s Matthew Shardlake. The book earned two nominations from the Crime Writers Association, one for the Best Debut and the other for the Best Historical Mystery, an award that he would go on to earn with Dark Fire, his second Shardlake novel.
Sarah	He released a total of seven books in the Shardlake series, and they had upwards of three million copies sold, although I’m not entirely clear on that. His obituary said close to three million, and an article from 2014 suggested he’d already surpassed that figure.
Sarah	He also wrote a spy novel set in the Spanish Civil War and an alternate history set in the early 1950s, which won him a Sidewise Award for Best Alternative History.
Sarah	Sansom died in 2024 after being diagnosed in 2012 with cancer.
Brook	Well, thanks, Sarah. You know, we have talked about over the years a lot of introverted, I guess, authors, people who don’t enjoy the limelight. Agatha Christie herself was very reticent to talk to the press, didn’t do a lot of public appearances. But of all the authors we’ve highlighted, C.J. Sansom might be the most introverted of them all from what I learned.
Sarah	I have to agree, Brook. The bio on his website is only two sentences, and they just cover his education and professional history having worked as a lawyer. So, you know he did not reveal a lot about himself. But he did publish a couple of essays. And one was published in 2018 detailing how he experienced you know such bullying from not only students, but also teachers at this very prestigious private school that he attended. And he was there for 10 years, but he left at 15 because of this bullying and attempted suicide afterwards and ended up being institutionalized for a year.
Sarah	And learning that gave me a ah deeper understanding of his Shardlake character, because we see in each of the books where he experiences at least one scene where he is either physically or verbally assaulted because of his hunchback.
Brook	Mm-hmm.
Brook	Right, right. So yes, in the novels, he is a disabled barrister who is the sleuth, and it would have been referred to as a hunchback in those days.
Brook	Now we know that the the condition is scoliosis, right? But, absolutely. I found the same thing. I didn’t find the same article that you’re referring to, but I read an article he wrote in 2010 after another student made a complaint against the same school in that year. And he came forward with an article basically you know chiming in and sticking up for her. And he said in that article, “all my life, I’ve had the feelings of worthlessness, inferiority, and self-blame, characteristics of abused children.”
Brook	And you just can’t separate that from the Shardlake um character. However, what he did there was turn him into a champion and a hero. And I love that.
Sarah	Absolutely, you know, I think it’s wonderful that his character was, as you say, this champion for the underdog. And that was his career as well. His legal career was spent advocating for people who who needed that support.
Brook	Wasn’t that interesting to find that that is the category of law that he chose to practice in? And he practiced a complete career, essentially. He didn’t begin writing until he was later in life, maybe in his 40s or 50s. And then, as you said, his first novel was published in 2003, he would have been 51 at that age.
Sarah	Yeah, so he, um i you know, read an article that said that he, had always wanted to be a writer and kind of, you know, wrote on the side, was a member of ah of a writing group, and thought that he would have to wait until he retired before he pursued it.
Sarah	But when his father died, he um inherited some money, and he gave himself a year with that money to take a leave from his job, and just write. And that’s when he wrote his first book.
Brook	I love it. And as you mentioned, he had a PhD in history. And that also shines through in his work because these are meticulous historical novels. You know, we see a lot of historical mysteries, don’t we? It’s very popular.
Brook	Everyone loves to kind of travel back in time. But for Sansom, Tudor England is not just a setting or a gimmick. It is everything about it, isn’t it? It’s so well done and so rich and deep because, you know, he knows his stuff. He’s got a Ph.D.
Sarah	You’re you’re absolutely right, Brook. He would leave detailed notes, you know, if you’ve read any of the physical copies of his books, there are detailed notes at the end where he kind of explains where he may have strayed from history to suit the story, or where he had to make something up because You know, there wasn’t something to to back that up.
Sarah	He said in ah in a 2014 article, “The 16th century was the time when rational skeptical inquiry was beginning. I’m not saying that a man like Shardlake didn’t exist, but he could have where even 20 years earlier he couldn’t.”
Brook	Oh, that’s fascinating.
Sarah	So he was very deliberate in terms of when he set the stories. um And I thought this was super interesting that some of the research that he did, I think it was for his third book in this series. He actually turned that into an academic paper because he made a discovery that that warranted an actual academic paper to come out of that. And so, you know i think that’s fantastic.
Sarah	You know, his PhD was in, um it was in history, but it was in um British South African policy ah between the between the two world wars.
Sarah	So a very, very specific, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brook	Fascinating.
Sarah	So not not related to what most of his writing was about.
Brook	Oh, that’s great to know. i was actually going to ask if you knew what his PhD was in, but as we said, information is is difficult to find about Sansom, but that is a wonderful tidbit.
Brook	But he definitely had the skills of, um you know, the scholarly skills to do the research involved and then create this entire world. And I love knowing what like his reason why of choosing that ah era. But wow, it is such a wealth of opportunity, isn’t it? Because in King Henry VIII’s court, we had all these fascinating players ah with differing agendas. We have the Reformation going on, secret agendas.
Brook	it’s It’s just such a wonderful setup. And Sansom uses these real-life figures in his stories, doesn’t he?
Sarah	Mm hmm. Yeah, he does. I mean, he made up several characters, but he definitely included. real characters that anyone who’s familiar with that era would see. Right. So Cromwell, um, he refers to, and in in fact, um, knows Catherine Parr, one of, um, uh, King Henry’s ah wives, his final wife.
Sarah	There were definitely ah historical figures that feature in his stories. And I think that would um have been really important. Some of the research that he was doing to verify that, you know, for this particular event, these were the people who were present and and who were involved.
Sarah	So he wrote two standalone books that were also historical. So one about the Spanish Civil War, it’s a spy a thriller called Winter in Madrid. That was the second book that he wrote, but the third that was published. um His, I think, publishers saw the success of Dissolution and decided that um they needed to have another book in that series before they they released something else.
Sarah	Then it was in 2012 he released Dominion, which is an alternative history. Imagining what 1950s Britain would be like had they and signed an agreement with the Germans. And so the Blitz didn’t happen. But ah there was, you know, a very different um resolution to the Second World War as a result. And it is ah very good book. i I read it shortly after it came out. And I loved it.
Brook	Yeah, I was not aware of the two standalones, ah but that one did definitely catch my attention. and I thought, oh, that sounds like a fascinating read. Is there a mystery element to that book, Sarah?
Sarah	Well, it’s more of a political thriller, but um I read it because i already loved C.J. Sensen’s writing and and wanted to read kind of anything that that he wrote.
Sarah	um But I will admit that I didn’t actually realize it was an alternative history until partway through the book when there was a reference to something. And then I thought, you know, I’m not super familiar with the details of the Second World War and kind of what life was like afterwards.
Sarah	But I know enough that this does not sound like something that I’ve heard before. And I had to look it up. And that’s when I realized that um that this was an alternative history. And I think it made me enjoy the book that much more when I realized that.
Brook	So let’s talk about the recent Disney+ adaptation of the Shardlake series.
Sarah	Yeah, so I’ll just give a little bit of background on that. In 2007, I think it was, um it was announced that Kenneth Branagh would be playing Shardlake in a BBC adaptation, um which was didn’t actually end up happening because Kenneth Branagh then took on the role of Wallander in that series.
Sarah	um And so the the that adaptation, the Shardlake adaptation was shelved. And then, yeah last year, ah Disney+ released an adaptation of the first book, Dissolution. um And it was it was quite good.
Sarah	ah But I guess it wasn’t well enough received because they announced earlier this year that there’s not going to be another season of that.
Brook	Oh, that’s disappointing to me. I really enjoyed it. And I loved that they chose Arthur Hughes, who um is an actor who has a disability, to play ah Shardlake. It was wonderful. And I watched a couple of interviews with Hughes, and he was a wonderful Shardlake, in my opinion. And much better than Kenneth Branagh would have been, and I think.
Sarah	I have to agree, Brook.
Brook	But I am disappointed that there won’t be more. And I encourage anyone who likes these novels to go and watch Dissolution because I think it was really well done. and because I think it was really well done.
Sarah	It did depart from the story in the book a little bit, um but it wasn’t, it didn’t depart so much that it it wasn’t enjoyable. um And yeah, i I am disappointed that there’s, that there’s not going to be any more, but there are some um BBC audio versions. So like full cast radio play versions, I think of all of the books in the Shardlake series.
Sarah	And a community theater group performed Sovereign, which is actually the third book in this series.
Brook	Oh, that’s great.
Sarah	Yeah, I think that that’s really fun.
Brook	I did find it sad, however, that CJ Sansom passed away just before the release of that great Disney+ series. And in fact, it was April 27th last year, so almost exactly a year ago.
Sarah	Yeah, it is it is a pity. I imagine, i’d like to think that he had the opportunity to see some of it before he died. um But, um you know, as we said, he had cancer for some time. So I don’t know how how ill he was ah towards the end of his life.
Sarah	So one thing that I came across, Brook, is this was from a 2010 interview where he explains that he made Shardlake a lawyer because it’s a profession that continues to exist.
Sarah	And so readers can connect with that, recognizing that, you know, Tudor England is something that people know about, but there would be a lot of jobs that people had that don’t that are no longer around today.
Sarah	And so I think that was really clever of him. Obviously, he was drawing on what he knew, as you as we said earlier, history and and law. um But, you know, to to make his main character have a profession that we all can recognize, I think was was really smart.
Brook	And a profession that is, there’s an easy explanation of why they would be getting involved in crimes. it was It was really great.
Brook	I remember in Disillusion that the character of Shardlake is um interacting with a woman who he finds attractive, and he’s sort of surprised to realize that that she probably likes him too. like Shardlake has a hard time believing, I think, because or trusting because of his disability that somebody could could love him.
Brook	And um it’s very touching. It’s in a very it’s a very emotional line running through the book And I see that similarity in Sansom.
Brook	You know, he never married. And he talks about because of his past that he also had trouble trusting people.
Sarah	Yeah, I think that um piece of information about his past, I think it must have been very difficult for him to speak about it, but also something that was very important for him to do so.
Sarah	And i think, ah as I said, like, I just have a ah much better understanding of the character after learning that piece of information about him.
Brook	But because of that fact that he didn’t marry, he didn’t have children, he was an only child himself, it got me curious about what would happen with his intellectual property, especially now that you know we’re having adaptations and and further um further growth. And his estate is being represented by his longtime agent, and ah who is with the Green and Heaton agency. And, you know, that that made me really happy to know that this person who had been with him throughout his career was now in charge of ah you know keeping his work and and sharing it with others. And yeah I really hope that the Disney+ adaptation will cement that legacy for him and bring in a whole other generation of fans.
Sarah	Yeah, I agree. I hope um that people continue to enjoy his books. I think he was working on the eighth book in the series when he died. One thing that I read was that it was starting to take him longer and longer to do his books because of the cancer.
Sarah	And, you know, maybe there’s someone who can… finish the book for him. We’ve talked before about um um other authors continuing an original author’s legacy whether it’s ah as with the case of Margery Allingham, where her husband finished a book that ah had been in progress when she died, and then her stories featuring Albert Campion were continued by Mike Ripley, who we interviewed and spoke with in ah in a previous episode.
Sarah	Or like with Agatha Christie and Sophie Hannah, where she has Sophie Hannah has written some new Poirot novels, um really in the spirit of of Agatha Christie.
Brook	Yeah, it will be interesting to see what his estate does from here on.
Sarah	So I mentioned a couple of his awards, Brook. He received the Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association in 2022. And we’ve talked before about that’s kind of how… When we identify who we consider a modern great, one of the criteria is whether they’ve received that type of award for you know lifetime achievement in writing.
Sarah	um And one of the things that I think is really nice about him having received that is he was um inspired by P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, and both of them have received the same award. So I think that was, I’d like to think that that was a you know a particularly meaningful moment for him.
Brook	Yeah, that’s really special.
Sarah	Well, Brook, thank you so much for having this conversation with me about CJ Sansom, one of my favorite historical mystery authors.
Brook	Yes, and thank you, Sarah, for introducing him to me. I enjoy this series very much. And listeners, if you have not tried out Sansom’s work, we definitely recommend him.
Brook	But until next time, thank you for joining us today on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook.
Sarah	And I and Sarah, and we both love mystery.