Charles Nicholl – författare

In 1593, the brilliant and controversial young playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a Deptford lodging house. The circumstances were shady, the official account - a violent quarrel over the bill, or 'recknynge' - long regarded as dubious.For the first time tracing Marlowe's shadowy political and intelligence dealings, Charles Nicholl uncovers critical new evidence about that fatal day. Also providing an enthralling revelation of the extraordinary underworld of Elizabethan crime and espionage, the 'secret theatre', Nicholl penetrates four centuries of obscurity to expose a complex and chilling story of entrapment and betrayal.

Leonardo da Vinci is the most mysterious of all the great artists, continuing to inspire and intrigue centuries after his death. Who lies behind the legend of the 'Renaissance genius'? What is the real story behind his elusive masterpieces and tantalizing notebooks? Prize-winning author Charles Nicholl has immersed himself for five years in all the manuscripts, paintings and artefacts to produce an 'intimate portrait' of Leonardo. He uses these contemporary materials - his notebooks and sketchbooks, eye witnesses and early biographies, etc - as a way into the mental tone and physical texture of his life and has made myriad small discoveries about him and his work and his circle of associates. This compelling, lyrical biography explores Leonardo's life as never before, brilliantly illuminating the man behind the enigma.

History leaves traces of the people - Byron, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, Leonardo - living through it, in portraits, documents and books. In Traces Remain, Charles Nicholl, the acclaimed author of The Reckoning, The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street and Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind, transforms these glimpses through time into comic and poignant vignettes, and curious, intriguing puzzles. From a mysterious painting found in a Hereford house to the death of an alchemist, and from a new Jack the Ripper suspect to a gold hunt in El Dorado, Nicholl's twenty-five fascinating essays take in two murders, three disappearances and a missing Shakespeare play to show the marvel and tenacity of these wonderful historical traces. 'Our finest literary and historical detective ... Deliciously readable' Financial Times'Charles Nicholl confirms his role as literature's historic Holmes ... thoroughly captivating' Scotsman 'Some writers are so good at what they do that they can take you anywhere. Charles Nicholl is one of them' Irish Times

In 1612 Shakespeare gave evidence at the Court of Requests in Westminster – it is the only occasion his spoken words are recorded. The case seems routine – a dispute over an unpaid marriage-dowry – but it opens up an unexpected window into the dramatist’s famously obscure life-story. Charles Nicholl applies a powerful biographical magnifying glass to this fascinating episode in Shakespeare’s life. Marshalling evidence from a wide variety of sources, including previously unknown documentary material on the Mountjoys, he conjures up a detailed and compelling description of the circumstances in which Shakespeare lived and worked, and in which he wrote such plays as Othello, Measure for Measure and King Lear.

In 1986, Charles Nicholl travels through Thailand to learn about the spiritual traditions of forest Buddhism in the north of the country. But interesting things have a habit of getting in the way. When Nicholl meets Harry, an old French Indochina hand, on the night train north with his tales of Kachin jade and Shan opium it leads to a journey along the banks of the Mekong, into the Golden Triangle and then across the border into Burma, in the company of the book s Thai heroine, Kitai.