CJ Sansom Dies: Author Of Shardlake Novels Adapted For TV By Disney+ Was 72

CJ Sansom, author of the best-selling historical Shardlake novels, which have been adapted for TV by Disney+, has died aged 71. He passed away on April 27 after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2012. 

Sansom’s publisher, Pan Macmillan, announced his death yesterday on X.

“I shall miss him hugely, not only as a wonderfully talented writer who gave joy to millions, but as a dear friend of enormous compassion and integrity,” said his longtime editor Maria Rejt.

Sansom’s Shardlake series comprised seven novels following the titular Matthew Shardlake, a barrister with a hunchback who solves crimes while navigating the political intrigue and religious tensions under Henry VIII. The book series drew on his real-life experience as a lawyer for the disadvantaged in Sussex, a profession he was drawn to after obtaining a PhD in history from the University of Birmingham. The first Shardlake novel, Dissolution, was published in 2003 and was adapted into 10 episodes for BBC Radio 4 in 2012. He was reportedly working on an eighth titled Ratcliff before he died.

Sansom also authored Dominion, an alternate history book set in Britain after a fictitious Axis triumph in World War II, and Winter in Madrid, a thriller set in 1940 in the wake of the Spanish Civil War. 

His death came just days before the release of the TV adaptation of Shardlake on Disney+. Set in Tudor England, Arthur Hughes is leading the series alongside the likes of Anthony Boyle and Sean Bean.

At a screening of Shardlake in London ahead of its premiere, executive producer Stevie Lee referred to Sansom’s “extreme patience” as she held on to the rights for more than a decade. “I got incredibly lucky that I read this book, and through that got to know him,” she added.

Lee said that Sansom “brilliantly conjures” what it was like to live in Tudor England. Stephen Butchard, who is writing the TV Version, said he “had an ambition to make this [show] as good as the books.”