What do you think?
Rate this book
Shardlake: Heartstone: A BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
Summer 1545, and Shardlake heads to Portsmouth on a case assigned to him by Catherine Parr. As the city and surrounding waters turn its attention to war, events come to a head on King Henry's flagship, The Mary Rose . A thrilling BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatization based on the fifth entry in C. J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime novel. Unabridged.
1 pages, Audio CD
Published July 1, 2018
About the author
C.J. Sansom
33 books3,991 followersChristopher 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.
(from Wikipedia®)
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.
(from Wikipedia®)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 11, 2020
Gosh these productions are so good… it’s like listening to a movie of the book. I mean they manage to dramatise the sinking of the Mary Rose!
Shardlake has two cases, one of his own for his friend in Bedlam, Ellen Fettiplace. She is suffering from agoraphobia and cannot leave the asylum after an assault years ago. Someone pays her fees, but whom? And more importantly, why?
The second case is a request from the Queen Catherine Parr. One of her servants has lost a son; he was a tutor to some orphaned children taken as wards by a relative, but was found hanged in his home. The verdict was suicide. Before he died, he told his mother that a ‘monstrous wrong’ had been perpetrated on the children.
Shardlake’s assistant Barack is on tenterhooks waiting for his wife to give birth. But he needs to be less churlish to the men who are rounding up any able bodied man to fight for the King against France, or he will end up with a long bow in his hand.
Archery, wards, fraud, murder, rape… it’s all here.
You’d think people would have learnt by now NOT to threaten Shardlake to back off on a case.
Naturally the cases intersect in interesting and unexpected ways. The evil Sir Richard Rich returns. And Shardlake bobs to the surface.
4 stars
Shardlake has two cases, one of his own for his friend in Bedlam, Ellen Fettiplace. She is suffering from agoraphobia and cannot leave the asylum after an assault years ago. Someone pays her fees, but whom? And more importantly, why?
The second case is a request from the Queen Catherine Parr. One of her servants has lost a son; he was a tutor to some orphaned children taken as wards by a relative, but was found hanged in his home. The verdict was suicide. Before he died, he told his mother that a ‘monstrous wrong’ had been perpetrated on the children.
Shardlake’s assistant Barack is on tenterhooks waiting for his wife to give birth. But he needs to be less churlish to the men who are rounding up any able bodied man to fight for the King against France, or he will end up with a long bow in his hand.
Archery, wards, fraud, murder, rape… it’s all here.
You’d think people would have learnt by now NOT to threaten Shardlake to back off on a case.
Naturally the cases intersect in interesting and unexpected ways. The evil Sir Richard Rich returns. And Shardlake bobs to the surface.
4 stars
February 3, 2021
I like the Shardlake Novel, and while the BBC dramatisation tells the salient points, all the deep insights into Tudor history are stripped out.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews