WRITER WRITING ON A WRITER

WRITER WRITING ON A WRITER

considered by Norman Warwick

Nicholas William Richmond Shakespeare (left) is an English novelist and biographer.

Born to a diplomat, Nicholas Shakespeare grew up in the Far East and in South America. He was educated at the Dragon School preparatory school in Oxford, then at Winchester College and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist for BBC television and then on The Times as assistant arts and literary editor. From 1988 to 1991 he was literary editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

Since 2000, Shakespeare has been Patron of the Anita Goulden Trust, helping children in the Peruvian city of Piura. The UK-based charity was set up following an article that Shakespeare wrote for the Daily Telegraph magazine, which raised more than £350,000. He has written biographies of the nomadic Bruce Chatwin, author of Songlines among many travel books, and Shakespeare has also produced a biography of Ian Fleming.

He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married with two small boys and currently lives in Oxford.

we´re gonna need a bigger bookshelf

Award-winning novelist Nicholas Shakespeare has written the definitive biography of one of the most influential literary figures of our times, Bruce Chatwin, whose works’ are strangely a compelling combination of research, first-hand experience, myth, and mystification which may have been the real substance of his seemingly contradictory life.

Chatwin’s first book, In Patagonia, became an international bestseller, revived the art of travel writing, and inspired a generation to set out in search of adventure. Chatwin became a celebrity, while remaining a conundrum. With little formal education, he had become a director of Sotheby’s. An avid collector, he eschewed material things and revered the nomadic life. Married for twenty-three years, he had male lovers throughout the world. And only at his death did his personal myth fail him. Nicholas Shakespeare, who was given unrestricted access to his papers, spent eight years retracing Chatwin’s steps and interviewing the people who knew him. The result is a biography that is at once sympathetic and revelatory.