Featured Publications
Did the Archbishop really die when he was shot celebrating mass in the Cathedral of San Silva, a Portuguese-speaking republic of Central America? Or did he disappear by miracle to appear again in the hinterland jungle of Silva Muruayama to preach again his faith and revolution theology; or, a third possibility, did he really never die but recovered and was saved by his supporters? If he was still alive, he would be a threat not only to the Vatican but also to the ruling joint dictators, Massolo and Hermione Cumba.
Available in Kindle Edition
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Available in Kindle Edition
From £3.85
The Butcher of Poland: Hitler's Lawyer Hans Frank
The life of Bavarian Hans Frank, one of the ten war criminals hanged at Nuremburg in 1946, has not received the full attention the world has given to other Nazi leaders. In many ways, he warrants it more. His life symbolised Germany's hubristic and visionary ambition to an alarming degree, much better than anyone else's, perhaps because he was an intellectual of the highest calibre.
An early supporter of the Nazi Party, Frank ultimately became Hitler's personal lawyer and later served as Governor General of Poland during the Second World War. He was a fervent advocate of Nazi racist ideology and became the primary – if not the archetypal – symbol of evil, establishing a reign of terror against Polish civilians and becoming directly involved in the mass murder of Jews. The Butcher of Poland is a harrowing account of Hans Frank, the man who formalised the Nazi race laws.
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An early supporter of the Nazi Party, Frank ultimately became Hitler's personal lawyer and later served as Governor General of Poland during the Second World War. He was a fervent advocate of Nazi racist ideology and became the primary – if not the archetypal – symbol of evil, establishing a reign of terror against Polish civilians and becoming directly involved in the mass murder of Jews. The Butcher of Poland is a harrowing account of Hans Frank, the man who formalised the Nazi race laws.
Available in Kindle Edition & Paperback
From £6.99
Ian McKellen: The Biography
Few actors achieve in their lifetime what Sir Ian McKellen has. A repertoire of vast commercial success coupled with critically acclaimed and authoritative Shakespearian roles. A man whose achievements inspire both admiration and affection. McKellen has been feted and admired in every country across the globe, and has been knighted by, and received the Companionship of Honour from Queen Elizabeth II. He is an icon of, and ardent campaigner in the cause for LGBT rights.
'[A] fascinating voyage round McKellen'
Simon Callow, Guardian
Available in Kindle Edition, Audible, Paperback & Hardcover
From £0.99
'[A] fascinating voyage round McKellen'
Simon Callow, Guardian
Available in Kindle Edition, Audible, Paperback & Hardcover
From £0.99
Also Available on Amazon
Darlings of the Gods
The marriage of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in 1940 was one of the great love stories of its day, with Olivier rapidly becoming the leading actor of his generation and Vivien Leigh soon to attain an international reputation in Gone With The Wind. By the end of the Second World War the Oliviers ruled the English stage, which is where Garry O’Connor’s book begins.
In 1948, the Oliviers led an Old Vic Company tour of Australia and New Zealand. Their marriage was no longer as secure as it had once been, and by the time they reached England again, the best years were behind them. Included in this fascinating account are anecdotes of the Oliviers’ travels working in Australasia and being entertained as celebrities. Available in Kindle Edition, Paperback & Hardcover From £0.00 (kindleunlimited) |
Alec Guinness
A definitive, revealing biography of actor Alec Guinness, whose career spanned much of the twentieth century. He appeared in seventy-seven films and fifty-five plays, acclaimed for such roles as Professor Marcus in The Lady Killers, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and George Smiley in le Carré’s Smiley’s People. He was an astonishingly gifted actor who became a British national treasure, familiar to many. Yet Guinness was a complex, thoughtful man, careful throughout his life to reveal little of the real self beneath the roles he assumed. He died with much of the truth still submerged. Garry O’Connor’s timely biography gives us the full story, including revelations on Guinness’s childhood, his secret relationships and the fears that haunted him throughout his life. Backed by O’Connor’s usual meticulous research, including interviews with Guinness himself and those close to him, this riveting account fills in the gaps, adding a new depth to our understanding not just of Guinness’s life but of his remarkable acting talent.
Available in Kindle Edition, Paperback & Hardcover From £2.90 |
The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Maggie Teyte
From humble beginnings as a child in London disturbing her neighbour, Maggie Teyte became an international celebrity of the Edwardian era. Travelling to Paris, Teyte was taught by Jean de Reszke, Reynaldo Hahn and Claude Debussy. In France her talent flourished, and Teyte forged a successful career in French opera and song. Such was her voice, and her interpretation of works such as Mozart’s, that she not only popularised them but became a pioneer of opera for her era.
As if living in a fairy tale, a late career resurgence saw Maggie Teyte accomplish her lifetime goal: returning to America, she finally performed Mélisande in New York. A modern woman with a strong personality, she entranced audiences the world over, with critics remarking that she wasn’t simply playing a character, but that she was the character. Available in Kindle Edition, Paperback & Hardcover From £0.00 (kindleunlimited) |
Sean O'Casey: A Life
The writer whose greatest creation was himself…
The character Sean O’Casey designed for himself became real and inhabitable — much greater than any of the great stage characters he carved out of his Dublin upbringing. Born John Casey in Dublin, 1880, whilst his oldest siblings had been educated to the age of eighteen, before he was fourteen the future playwright had already been sent out to work. As a young man he embraced Irish nationalism, learnt the language, and Gaelicised his name; it was almost time for Sean O’Casey to enter stage right. It was during this time he began writing, but, unlike the satirical ballads that became staples for the rebels, it would be 1923 before one of his plays was publically performed. The Shadow of a Gunman marked the beginning of his relationship with the Abbey Theatre, and before long he was being touted as J. M. Synge’s heir. Like his creations, drawn from his own life and those of the people around him, O’Casey’s blunt honesty, his readiness to fight over his opinions, incurred measures of ill will. Sean O’Casey’s life is as rich and layered as any play, yet in this skilfully crafted biography Garry O’Connor reveals the man behind the myth, and all his glorious contradictions. Available in Kindle Edition, Paperback & Hardcover From £0.00 (kindleunlimited) |
The Darlings of Downing Street
Garry O’Connor, better known for his probing researches into the lives, loves and professional craft of figures large on stage and screen – figures as diverse as Peggy Ashcroft and Alec Guinness – is eminently well placed to deconstruct theatrical trends in modern political life. His insights into the duality and mimetic display of Tony and Cherie Blair encapsulate at a stroke the tasteless descent of public debate, with politics a discipline now more or less one with media showmanship. It’s the image, underpinned by short, nominal, non-verbal slogans, that infects almost every aspect of modern culture. We cannot blame the Blairs personally, who after all are only products themselves of the media schedule, but O’Connor’s searching biography of that pair – a symbiotic pair – not entirely unique in contemporary politics, is as good a litmus as any of leadership as more public display than public accountability.
Available in Kindle Edition & Hardcover From £4.99 |
Universal Father: A Life of Pope John Paul II
The first biography to tell the full and extraordinary story of one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, setting the private individual in the public context.
Pope John Paul II is now universally considered to have been one of the great leaders of the twentieth century and possibly the most politically influential pope since St Peter. His achievements are well documented, yet he once said, 'I can only be understood from the inside.' In this vivid and accessible living portrait, O'Connor investigates the inner man, including Karol Wojtyla's life before he became Pope and his friendships with men and women, subtly analysing the Pope's own poems, plays and philosophical works for clues as to what made him tick. It also dramatically follows his life, from his birth in Poland in 1920, through the losses that shaped his childhood, the assassination attempt in 1981, and his great public confrontations on the world stage, right up until his death in April 2005. Available in Kindle Edition, Paperback & Hardcover From £2.90 |
The First Household Cavalry Regiment 1943-44: In the Shadow of Monte Amaro
The mettle of the famous First Household Cavalry Regiment was tested to the maximum in action in the mountains of Italy in 1943–44. This book explores a largely undervalued and forgotten part of a costly and complex struggle. We directly experience what it was like to be there through the words of those who were. In late 1943 1st HCR was sent to Syria to patrol the Turko-Syrian border, it being feared that Turkey would join the Axis powers. In April 1944, 1st HCR was shipped to Italy. The Italian campaign was at that time well underway. During the summer of 1944, 1st HCR were in action near Arezzo and in the advance to Florence in a reconnaissance role, probing enemy positions, patrolling constantly. The Regiment finally took part in dismounted actions in the Gothic Line – the German defensive system in Northern Italy. Based upon interviews with the few survivors still with us and several unpublished diaries, there are many revelations that will entertain – and some that will shock. The 1st Household Cavalry 1943–44 is published on the 70th anniversary of the actions described, as a tribute to the fighting force made up from the two most senior regiments of the British Army and, in the words of His Grace the Duke of Wellington who has kindly provided the foreword, 'to gain insight into why such a war should never be fought again'.
Available in Kindle Edition & Hardcover From £10.39 |
Death's Duel: A Novel of John Donne Kindle Edition
1586 - fear and distrust are eating out the heart of Elizabethan England.
The Catholics of England are being hunted down and persecuted, and any who are seen to be harbouring them are put to death. John Donne, the famous love poet, and later Dean of St Paul’s, is torn between damning his soul and renouncing his Catholic heritage, or damning his body by going against his Queen and country, and failing to practice the Protestant faith. In the intense ‘witch-hunt’ which follows, he becomes black-listed as someone to watch out for. After being set upon by a young man convinced he is a Catholic rebel, Donne is forced into a duel. And to his dismay, he kills his Scottish rival. Donne doesn’t know which way to turn and soon he is pursued by unknown forces who want justice for the crime he has committed. Things are complicated further by the machinations of his mistress, the cold-hearted yet tantalizing Kate Ferrars, who tempts him to a fate worse than self destruction. As the tortured poet wriggles this way and that to escape his fate, a series of mounting climaxes brings this authentic and majestic tale to a fitting and macabre end… Available in Kindle Edition From £0.00 (kindleunlimited) |
The Butcher of Poland: Poland is Nowhere (CentreHouse Press Modern Playwrights) Kindle Edition
Condemned to death and hanged in 1947, Hans Frank’s public repentance was unique among the leading Nazi criminals tried at Nuremberg. One psychiatrist pointed out Frank’s ‘beatific tranquillity merely hid his own tensions’. But what of such carefully acted out piety? Didn’t this hastily cultivated yet forceful and theatrical piety have something about it which was so patently flimsy compared to the much more formidable integrity and long studied piety of Pope Pius XII?
Both had their roots in South German and Italian theatricality. In the way Frank called attention to himself on every possible occasion he was no ordinary criminal. He was not only criminal in his acts and attitudes, which he acknowledged, but also he flaunted, in an egotistic, nihilistic way, a vanity of evils which today remain a significant part of our culture. Unlike Ribbentrop, who lamented he would never be able to write his ‘beautiful memoirs’, Frank wasted no time during the trial and had gone ahead. He composed his testament, *Facing the Gallows*, with a dedication from Goethe’s *Werther*, in quoting from which he subtly changed the wording to underpin his self-serving account of ‘former and partial guilt’ – to make it sound as if God endorsed it, which was not in the sense of the original. And now, faced with execution, commented the much younger but level-headed psychiatrist, Frank really felt spiritually liberated as never before. All he needed was sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, the fresh-faced and pleasant psychiatrist might have commented. His dreams took him ‘beyond the confines of his cell’, he noted. Frank transfixed him. He had not made up his mind as to whether Frank was sincere or not: he recounted that he saw ‘Vast vistas of endless sea, and high mountains of sky….’ Available in Kindle Edition From £1.99 |
The Vagabond Lover
Cavan O’Connor was born into near destitution in Nottingham in 1899, but quickly rose to become the legendary ‘Vagabond of Song’. He was one of the most famous singing legends of his era, topping Variety bills. In the golden age of radio, his broadcasts reached listening figures of over thirteen million. With his flawless tenor voice he soon achieved the status of latter-day troubadour, a star of stage imitated by romantics of all ages all over the world. But what lay behind the idealised celebrity? Was he a natural, golden entertainer, or a flawed, vulnerable being like the rest of us? Enter writer son Garry O’Connor, who answers that question emphatically. In his memoir The Vagabond Lover, the father-son dispute unveils without sentimentality the general mess of domestic and family life, of which Cavan was the head. Revealed – in this searing, honest, dark revelation – are the miserable depths the sweet singer of lyrical song plumbed, and remorselessly so. O’Connor fils does not spare the reader, refusing to gloss over the traumas and crises of family conflict, as they run in parallel to his own fortunes and vicissitudes. He is dispassionate with the biographical detail, yet impassioned enough to recall one of his own plays, penned in his Cambridge youth, where the father Cavan is reimagined. In fiction as in life he is cast as the pivotal character in a family drama painful in its climaxes. Overarching is a first ever account of those Cambridge years, populated with familiar icons of twenty-first-century culture. It’s a fast-moving, two-pronged probe into the nature of celebrity, arriving at a profound resolution as the author shrugs off the flaws and setbacks packaged as part of the celebrity deal.
Available in Kindle Edition & Hardcover From £3.99 |
The Mahabharata: Peter Brook’s Epic in the Making Kindle Edition
‘One of the most powerful threads that goes through it is that it’s a story told to a young man so that he can learn how to live through a most difficult, dangerous and terrible period of history — a period, like our own, of everything at an end-of-the-world explosion point.’
As a piece of theatre, Peter Brook’s production of The Mahabharata reached fifteen cities spread over three continents. It ran as a nine-hour piece which played over three consecutive nights or over an entire day or night. The great director sought to use ‘the Deadly Theatre’ as an invigorating force. The Mahabharata speaks of epic loves and hatreds, of battles and of gods and demons. Peter Brook, his cast and his backstage team, created a piece of art that encapsulates the religion, myth, philosophy and spiritual history of India, a reflection of the Indian way of life. Garry O’Connor gives a description of Brook’s methods and past successes. He goes on to tell of the germination, long writing process and global tour of The Mahabharata, greeted with mixed reviews by New York newspaper critics but impressing others in Asia and in Europe. We learn of the ways that the staging was adapted for the film version, which managed to secure funding and a shooting location, after Brook decided against using India. The book includes a summary of the main characters and plot of The Mahabharata, making it a perfect companion to any fan of, or newcomer to, the film or its source material, the Bhagavad Gita. Available in Kindle Edition From £0.00 (kindleunlimited) |
Love at an End Kindle Edition
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Not just a marriage but one of the great love stories of its time.
As actors, separately or together, their box office appeal was tremendous.And off stage their passionate affair captured the hearts of millions. At the height of their stardom in 1948, with Laurence Olivier artistic director of the Old Vic, they went on tour with his cast to Australia and New Zealand. The Old Vic tour they led was a symbolic public ‘Thank You’ from Britain for all the help the two countries had given during the war. In public, their’s was a near-regal progress. But in private … In private, a marriage already under strain was about to be tested and stressed to the limit. The tour was to be a turning point in their lives. A point they would never be able to recover from... Available in Kindle Edition From £0.00 (kindleunlimited) |
Subdued Fires: An Intimate Portrait of Pope Benedict XVI Kindle Edition
Omaha Beach, June 6, 2004. A delegation sent by John Paul II from the Vatican to commemorate the 60th anniversary of D-Day is headed by Joseph Ratzinger, a former Nazi youth who, while resident in Rome for the previous 23 years, is known as 'The Panzer Cardinal'. Ratzinger insisted on being at the commemoration. Garry O'Connor's biography begins here. And what is revealed from that point is an extraordinary figure, a man who a year later would be Pope, something no one predicted, at the age of 78. How did 12 years of Nazi rule affect the young Ratzinger? Did it inform his stand on religious persecution; famine and poverty; war and its consequences; climate change; stem-cell research and biological engineering; marriage and the family; abuse by priests; abortion, contraception, women priests, homosexuality, declining ordinations and Church attendance in Western Europe? And is it relevant to his astonishing resignation in February 2013? There is no one better qualified than Gary O'Connor, author of the international best seller, Universal Father: a Life of Pope John Paul II, to tell this remarkable story.
Available in Kindle Edition & Paperback From £0.00 (kindleunlimited) |
The Mahabharata: Peter Brook's Epic in the Making Hardcover
Recounts Brook's filming of his version of India's great epic poem, and discusses the background of the Mahabharata and its influence on Indian culture.
Available in Paperback & Hardcover From £2.90 |
Secret Woman: Life of Peggy Ashcroft
Garry O'Connor's is the first full biography of Peggy Ashcroft. In her lifetime she discouraged anyone who pried into her life. The private person remained undisclosed. Conceived following her death in 1991, O'Connor's biography redresses the balances. She was married three times and each marriage ended in divorce. O'Connor says she never reconciled herself to the differences between role-playing and private life. There's a frankness in the book that will astonish many readers.
Available in Hardcover From £2.90 |
Paul Scofield: The Biography
The first biography of Paul Scofield, one of Britain's finest classical actors who has even been described as the greatest actor in the world.Paul Scofield has been acting for sixty years but still constantly surprises and wins the admiration of critics. In December 2000 he was awarded the Companion of Honour in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film and theatre. Of the same generation as Redgrave, Gielgud and Olivier, Scofield too won international acclaim. He was awarded an Oscar for his portrayal of Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons in 1966 - and was nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Ralph Fiennes' father in Quiz Show in 1995. He has played all the great stage roles - Tynan described his Hamlet as the best he'd ever seen and he won a Bafta in 1997 for The Crucible.Garry O'Connor has spoken to the famously reclusive Scofield himself, as well as to many of the actors and directors he has worked with, including Simon Callow, Trevor Nunn, Richard Eyre and Peter Hall. The result is a masterly biography that paints a revealing portrait of a man who, for the serious film and theatre-goer, is more of an icon than any other living actor.
Available in Hardcover From £3.49 |
Campion's Ghost
Recreates a period when religious conflict made people live in fear and suspicion, and portrays John Donne, the poet, whose needs and nature mirror the fissured times in which he lives.
Available in Hardcover From £3.49 |
Chaucer's Triumph
Available in Hardcover From £14.83 |
The Terrorist
The late 1960s. Celebrity playwright Oliver Lindall has assembled his team of players for the premiere of his new play When Winter Comes. For the author, first-night nerves won’t be his only obstacle. Among his troupe is Simon Baird, chosen for his acting skills, yet known for his reputation. Baird has brooding class resentments and is as likely to wreak destruction as shine in any new production. When the play finally premieres, we still don’t know what it will be: more plaudits for Oliver Lindall, or chaos at the hands of the hugely talented, mercurial Simon Baird? In the climax of O’Connor’s The Terrorist we are delivered not only a verdict, but one further question: who actually owns the finished production – the playwright, the players, or the audience played to? Simon Baird has his answer, and demonstrates it graphically.
Available in Paperback From £7.10 |
Naked Woman: Semmelweis: De Raptu Meo
Under the one title 'Naked Woman' are brought together two plays by the critically acclaimed Garry O'Connor. The first, 'Semmelweis', is a victim play in the Tennessee Williams tradition, and the second, 'De Raptu Meo', is a theatrical re-creation of English poet Geoffrey Chaucer and his times. Semmelweis is from the start in a trap set by his own character and his overriding passion for truth. But his is a story of crushing disappointment, having parallels today, especially in medicine. To see flaws in the system, and to speak out against cover-ups and vested interest, invites pariah status and a ruthless sweeping aside in the relentless drive for conformity and profit. 'De Raptu Meo', as Libby Purves pointed out in her review, exposes the relativity of truth we find in contemporary culture, which she has contrasted with events surrounding English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who faced, in Richard II's reign, the accusation of rape. Present society is awash with stories of sexual abuse as no other age has been. Here is a take on that subject, with the audience asked to participate in Chaucer's trial as if the jury, and at the end give a verdict as to whether or not he was guilty of the crime. 'Semmelweis' was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival, and 'De Raptu Meo' had its first reading in Inner Temple, with Derek Jacobi in the part of Geoffrey Chaucer, and its first full performance in the same venue with Ian Hogg in the lead role.
Available in Paperback From £9.98 |
The Book That Kills
The Book is small and lethal, and everyone is fighting to possess it. It is worth a great deal of money and may have been written by the Marquis de Sade. Yet this mysterious, erotic book is intimately connected to a series of deaths and suicides of young women before it left France. The Book - The Memoirs of a Novice - has its roots in events that go back to the French Revolution, and has now become crucial to the present-day ambitions of a beautiful, young politician. Olympe de Chavagnac, a potential President of the French Republic when the present incumbent, Alphonse Lambaud, gives up his fourth term. Olympe is a monarchist who believes she is descended from the last Bourbons, executed during the French Revolution. So passionate is Olympe's belief in her re-incarnation, that she will stop at nothing to own the Book and with its authority become elected President, then restore the Bourbon Monarchy to France. And when she meets Guillaume Lemaitre, who becomes her sponsor and frustrated lover, Olympe forms an alliance with a modern de Sade - with terrifying consequences for the world. Inspired by author Garry O'Connor's discovery of an anonymous manuscript - Les Mémoires de Saturnin - in the garage loft after his family moved into their fifteenth century courthouse on the Oxfordshire/Northamptonshire borders in 1995, The Book that Kills is de Sade in a modern context, a powerful, erotic psychological thriller, a murder mystery and a historical intrigue.
Available in Hardcover From £19.99 |
Ralph Richardson: An Actor's Life
Garry O'Connor's critically acclaimed biography, is a warm and revealing portrait of an actor famous not only for his acting gifts but for his eccentric charm. Drawing on archives of the Old Vic and on many conversations with Sir Ralph and those around him, O'Connor has not only chronicled the events of a long, illustrious, and varied career, but has also, in a series of interchapters with Richardson, given us a full sense of his character. In addition, this new edition includes his "Diary of a Biographer" which tells the story of his relationship with Richardson during the research and writing of this book.
Available in Paperback & Hardcover From £7.19 |
William Shakespeare: A Life
Garry O'Connor's critically acclaimed biography, is a warm and revealing portrait of an actor famous not only for his acting gifts but for his eccentric charm. Drawing on archives of the Old Vic and on many conversations with Sir Ralph and those around him, O'Connor has not only chronicled the events of a long, illustrious, and varied career, but has also, in a series of interchapters with Richardson, given us a full sense of his character. In addition, this new edition includes his "Diary of a Biographer" which tells the story of his relationship with Richardson during the research and writing of this book.
Available in Paperback & Hardcover From £2.90 |
Olivier: In Celebration
Garry O'Connor's critically acclaimed biography, is a warm and revealing portrait of an actor famous not only for his acting gifts but for his eccentric charm. Drawing on archives of the Old Vic and on many conversations with Sir Ralph and those around him, O'Connor has not only chronicled the events of a long, illustrious, and varied career, but has also, in a series of interchapters with Richardson, given us a full sense of his character. In addition, this new edition includes his "Diary of a Biographer" which tells the story of his relationship with Richardson during the research and writing of this book.
Available in Paperback & Hardcover From £2.90 |
French Theatre Today
Garry O'Connor's critically acclaimed biography, is a warm and revealing portrait of an actor famous not only for his acting gifts but for his eccentric charm. Drawing on archives of the Old Vic and on many conversations with Sir Ralph and those around him, O'Connor has not only chronicled the events of a long, illustrious, and varied career, but has also, in a series of interchapters with Richardson, given us a full sense of his character. In addition, this new edition includes his "Diary of a Biographer" which tells the story of his relationship with Richardson during the research and writing of this book.
Available in Paperback & Hardcover From £26.01 |
I Forget How Nelson Died Kindle Edition
I Forget How Nelson Died, under the title Different Circumstances, was first staged in Oxford in 1974. The play is centred on a reimagined Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, relocated in place and time to a remote island paradise mid-twentieth century. There a helicopter lands, and its crew disembarks, with the task of wooing the fatigued man of inaction back to England and to war. It’s an unlikely collision of modern and eighteenth-century sensibilities, but there the drama does not end. There is much more that can happen on a remote island out of time and out of mind.
Available in Kindle Edition From £1.99 |
William Shakespeare: A Popular Life Kindle Edition
Shakespeare married at the age of eighteen. His wife, Anne, was older than him. Despite this, they remained married. She bore him a daughter and a set of twins. To Shakespeare, this was a remarkable feat.
Drawing on his own experiences, Shakespeare nurtured his thoughts and used these to formulate the plots behind many of his famous plays. He’d always been close to his mother, a theme that is seen clearly in some of his plays. Although his father tried, life and circumstances got in the way and he was unable to be the father he wanted.
The impact of a ‘near-absent’ father could have impacted Shakespeare’s fascination with women.
The birth of his twins – a boy and a girl – also had a profound impact on Shakespeare. The death of his son, Hamnet, aged 11, brought on the creation of Hamlet.
Shakespeare spent few of his children’s early years with them. He formed a relationship with the theatre and became embroiled in the political issues of the time, which led to dealings with the Queen herself.
Available in Kindle Edition, Paperback & Hardcover
From £0.00 (kindleunlimited)
Drawing on his own experiences, Shakespeare nurtured his thoughts and used these to formulate the plots behind many of his famous plays. He’d always been close to his mother, a theme that is seen clearly in some of his plays. Although his father tried, life and circumstances got in the way and he was unable to be the father he wanted.
The impact of a ‘near-absent’ father could have impacted Shakespeare’s fascination with women.
The birth of his twins – a boy and a girl – also had a profound impact on Shakespeare. The death of his son, Hamnet, aged 11, brought on the creation of Hamlet.
Shakespeare spent few of his children’s early years with them. He formed a relationship with the theatre and became embroiled in the political issues of the time, which led to dealings with the Queen herself.
Available in Kindle Edition, Paperback & Hardcover
From £0.00 (kindleunlimited)
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