About the Author

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 critically acclaimed Shardlake series, as well as Winter in Madrid and Dominion. C.J. Sansom died in April 2024.

Reviews

I have enjoyed C. J. Sansom’s series of historical novels set in Tudor England progressively more and more. Sovereign, following Dissolution and Dark Fire, is the best so far . . . Sansom has the perfect mixture of novelistic passion and historical detail
*Sunday Telegraph*

Even if heart-pounding suspense and stomach-tightening tension were all Sansom’s writing brought to the table, few would feel short-changed. Added to these gifts is a superb approximation of the crucible of fear, treachery and mistrust that was Tudor England, and a memorably blood-swollen portrait of the ogreish Henry’s inhumane kingship. A parchment-turner, and a regal one at that
*Sunday Times*

The best detective story I’ve read since The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . . . [a] devilishly ingenious whodunit . . . Sansom’s description of the brutality of Tudor life is strong stuff, but he is a master storyteller
*Guardian*

[The] third volume of C. J. Sansom’s deservedly popular Tudor detective series . . . Between them, Sansom and Starkey have the sixteenth century licked
*Independent*

A brilliant evocation of tyranny in Tudor England
*Literary Review*

A fine setting for crime fiction and C. J. Sansom exploits it superbly . . . Never mind the crime: this is a terrific novel
*TLS*

I was enthralled by Sovereign by C. J. Sansom, a novel combining detection with a brilliant description of Henry VIII’s spectacular Progress to the North and its terrifying aftermath
*P. D. James, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year*

Both marvellously exciting to read and a totally convincing evocation of England in the reign of Henry VIII
*Spectator, Books of the Year*