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Were you astonished when you learnt, at school, that the entire body of extant writing in Classical Greek could be written onto a single CD? What we definitely know of Shakespeare’s biography would not even fill a single track.

Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare, published in 2007, is all the more astonishing when we bear that in mind. With his usual touches of humour, Bryson fills almost 200 pages with fascinating information. He ranges from the question of Shakespeare’s sexuality as the author of the sonnets and the nature of the ‘dark lady’ of the sonnets to a discussion of all the alternative names put forward for authorship of his works.

Lovely Bryson common sense comes into play when he dismisses the name of the Earl of Oxford who died ten years before Shakespeare. ‘Now that is genius’, says Bryson, pointing out that most of Shakespeare’s greatest works appeared in the decade after Oxford died and would have had to be prepared in advance of his death, by Oxford, to keep the new plays flowing at a steady rate.

With such clear sight, humour and erudition, the book never falters, filling in lively background political and social material. It is immensely readable.

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