Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

The Times
'As wryly humorous as you'd expect...Bryson dig[s] up some enjoyably obscure nuggets.'

Time Out
'A joy from first to last...An accessible, exhilarating biography that's shot through with Bryson's trademark humour and irreverence...Tremendous.'

Irish Times
'Bryson's short biography is about as enjoyable as history books get. Bryson brings his trademark wit to a complex subject.'

Customer Reviews

A good text for GCSE History?
This is a history book about the life and times of William Shakespeare. Packed with fascinating anecdotal evidence and facts in the same style as Bryson's normal travel books this is engaging without being a laugh on every page. It is just the sort of book that would be ideal for a text for GCSE History as it illustrates how historians go about their business and what a job they have in mining information from a paucity of sources. Thoroughly recommended!

A natural choice for Bryson
Although best known for his travel writing, Bryson's books on the English language are brilliant, so it's quite appropriate to find him writing about its most famous exponent.
A huge amount has been written about Shakespeare and his life, despite the fact that very little is really known about him. Bryson keeps the focus on what is definitely known, with little forays into some of the best theories about the rest. Where nothing is known at all, the 'lost years', he chooses to explore Elizabethan London and culture instead, putting the man in context.
Informative, wry, and well researched, this debunks plenty of Shakespeare myths in an accessible and enjoyable style, and Bryson turns out to be an excellent guide.

I know less now having read this book
Bill Bryson is perhaps best known for his humorous travel essays and should have stuck to what he does best. If it were not for the lack of content this book would have been rated lower it was a relief that it was so brief. There is more fact in the Wikipedia page for Shakespeare than there was in all 150+ pages of this book. If you are searching for information on Elizabethan England this is the book for you not really for the Shakespeare aficionado.