Winter in Madrid

C. J. Sansom was educated at Birmingham University, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer. Sansom is the bestselling author of the acclaimed Shardlake series, the Spanish Civil War thriller Winter in Madrid and the number one bestseller Dominion. in 2023, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. He lived in Sussex until his death in 2024.

'If you like Sebastian Faulks and Carlos Ruiz Zafon, you'll love this' Daily Express 'Now here's a wonderful curiosity: a convincing and moving historical novel, which is also an exciting thriller' Sunday Times 'The material and human reality of Madrid in 1940 is recreated in authentic and believable detail. Sansom evokes the sights and sounds of a city that has withstood a siege for most of the war, and has now been taken by Franco's forces. Fear, hatred and desolation are palpable. There are some powerful set pieces in the novel ... As a portrait of a traumatized city, wrapped in silence because speech was dangerous, Winter in Madrid is a remarkable achievement' Times Literary Supplement 'Certainly contains all the elements of an exciting romantic thriller, but C. J. Sansom's real strength lies in an almost uncanny ability to create a sense of time and place. This is an unsentimental and utterly fascinating portrait of Spain in 1940 ... Sansom wears his research lightly and gets right under the skin of his characters. The result is a tense, literate page-turner, full of twists, authentic detail and real pathos, a superb achievement' Laura Wilson, Guardian 'It is a bold author who, having found acclaim with two historical novels firmly grounded in a particular period, stets his third novel in a entirely different place some 500 years later -- but that is what C.J. Sansom has done, and he has pulled it off magnificently ... Winter in Madrid shares with [Sansom's first two novels] the author's enviable ability to land his readers in an alien world, yet make them feel entirely at home ... In Sansom's capable hands, story, characters and that indefinable spirit of place meld and twist into a narrative that grips the reader throughout its 500-plus pages ... weaving together hard facts with romantic fiction -- his bleak winter thriller chills to the bone' Literary Review 'Winter in Madrid demonstrates that Sansom cannot easily be pigeonholed. The novel subtly mixes elements of different genres: part thriller, part romance, and part historical drama ... The world of post-civil war Madrid is finely and minutely observed, giving the entire novel a remarkable sense of place ... Together with the book's intricate and tightly structured plotting, Sansom spins the reader through to its bloody conclusion ... Compelling and well-written, [this is] a well-crafted and entertaining piece of fiction' Sunday Express 'Winter in Madrid may surprise fans of Sansom's usual medieval crime novels. It finds him dispensing with his quill and fast-forwarding five centuries to 1940s Spain -- a country ruined by war, poverty and civil divisions ... If post-civil war Madrid isn't natural territory for Sansom, you wouldn't know it -- the sorry state of the city is evoked in all its blood, dust and melancholy, while the story itself never becomes bogged down in polemic ... The climax is tremendously exciting and skilfully played out, and the characters are so convincing that it's tempting to cast the actors who will play them in the inevitable big-screen adaptation' Time Out