CJ Sansom is an author who has found his metier writing historical whodunnit mysteries set in Tudor England with Shardlake as his hunchback lawyer hero. Maybe he chose a lawyer as before he became a full time author he practised as a solicitor.
Let’s get this in proportion. There are 24,413 schools in England, or thereabouts, of which fewer than 150 are closed for a short time because of structural problems relating to a type of concrete that has outlived its safe life.
“Twilight over meadow and water, the eve-star shining above the hill, and Old Nog the heron crying kra-a-ark! as his slow dark wings carried him down to the estuary.” (First line, Tarka the Otter, Henry Williamson, 1927)
The Shardlake historical (Tudor) whodunnits are as “compulsively gripping” (Sunday Times), “superb” (Independent), “thrilling” (Sunday Telegraph) and “compelling” (Observer) as these plaudits on the cover of Revelation (the fourth in the series) attest.
If you want people to know you have a cold, ostentatiously blow your nose; but if you are feeling pretentious, something I sometimes feel, it’s not so easy to signal.