Born in
Worcester, England to diplomat
John William Richmond Shakespeare and his wife Lalage Ann, daughter of the travel writer and journalist
S. P. B. Mais, Shakespeare grew up in the Far East and in South America, including Brazil, where his father worked at the British Embassy between 1966 and 1969. John Shakespeare was later
chargé d'affaires at
Buenos Aires, before serving as
Ambassador to
Peru from 1983 to 1987, and
Ambassador to
Morocco from 1987 to 1990. Nicholas 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. Shakespeare's time in South America is represented in two novels,
The Vision of Elena Silves (1989,
Somerset Maugham Award,
Betty Trask Award) and
The Dancer Upstairs (1995, American Library Association Award for The Best Novel of the Year). Other works from this period are
The Men Who Would Be King (1984),
Londoners (1986) and
The High Flyer (1993, long-listed for the
Booker Prize). In 1999, Shakespeare published his biography of
Bruce Chatwin to widespread critical acclaim. This was followed by the novel
Snowleg (2004, long-listed for the Booker Prize,
Dublin IMPAC Award) a "place" book,
In Tasmania (2004, winner of the
Tasmania Book Prize 2007),
Secrets of the Sea (2007, short-listed for the Commonwealth Writer's prize) and
Inheritance (2010, long-listed for Dublin IMPAC Award). In 2010, he published
Under the Sun, the letters of Bruce Chatwin, which he co-edited with Elizabeth Chatwin. Nicholas Shakespeare has made several extended biographies for television: on
Evelyn Waugh,
Mario Vargas Llosa, Bruce Chatwin,
Martha Gellhorn, and
Dirk Bogarde.
The Dancer Upstairs was made into a feature
film of the same name in 2002, for which Shakespeare wrote the screenplay and which
John Malkovich directed. Shakespeare was nominated as one of
Grantas Best of British Young Novelists in 1993. He has written articles for
Granta, the
London Review of Books,
The Times Literary Supplement and
The Monthly, among other publications. Shakespeare's novels, which have been translated into 22 languages, place ordinary people against a background of significant events, as with
The Dancer Upstairs, which deals with
Abimael Guzmán, leader of Peru's
Shining Path; and
Snowleg, set partly during the
Cold War in
East Germany. In 1999, Shakespeare was made a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature. In 2010 Shakespeare was invited by the Anglo-Argentine Society to give the prestigious Borges Lecture in London. In January 2012, according to journalists, Nicholas Shakespeare's writings were mistakenly confused for
William Shakespeare's by French presidential candidate
François Hollande when he said: "Let me quote Shakespeare, 'they failed because they did not start with a dream'" () In 2013, Shakespeare published an account of his aunt,
Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France. In 2015, Shakespeare published a collection of stories,
Stories from Other Places. The central novella, "Oddfellows", was based on the
Battle of Broken Hill, a little-known jihadi attack in the Australian outback 100 years ago. On 1 January 1915, two Afghan camel drivers answered the Turkish sultan's call for a holy war against the British Empire, and attacked a picnic train of 1200 men women and children in the iron-ore town of Broken Hill, killing four. The incident was the only known act of hostility on Australian soil in World War One.
The Sunday Telegraph described them as "honed miniatures" and the Australian critic Peter Craven in the
Sydney Morning Herald wrote: "I do not expect to read a more formidable piece of short fiction this year." In 2016, Shakespeare was a visiting fellow at
All Souls College, Oxford, where he wrote the historical narrative "Six Minutes in May: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister" (2017), about the disastrous Norway Campaign of April 1940, which led to Churchill's unanticipated accession on Friday 10 May. Shakespeare's account was nominated as a Book of the Year in
The Economist,
The Guardian,
The Observer,
The Scotsman,
The Daily Telegraph (as No. 2 of "the Best 50 Books of 2017"), and
The Australian, where Peter Craven wrote: "Shakespeare has written a book that will captivate readers and fill professional historians with envy at how far he outclasses them." In 2024, Shakespeare published
Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, a biography of
James Bond creator Ian Fleming. The project was authorised by Fleming's estate. The
Wall Street Journals Anna Mundow called the book "arresting",
The Economist called it "definitive",
The Australian "a masterpiece... His book is better than almost any non-fiction ever gets, a work of literature in its own right", while
Washington Post columnist Michael Dirda also praised Shakespeare's work as 'a dazzling, even dizzying achievement'.
CrimeReads named the work one of its "best reviewed" books in April 2024. Shakespeare promoted the Fleming biography at literature festivals and other global events, including a collaboration with the
International Spy Museum in
Washington, D.C. Shakespeare claimed he took on the project after "discovering that [Fleming's] war work was indeed significant, as well as how much kinder he was in life than his posthumous caricature suggested." The Fleming biography also recounts the original casting of
Sean Connery in the role of Bond during the 1960s. It won the 2024
CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction.
Charity work Shakespeare has worked with charities such as
Oxfam, for which he has written several times, and the Anita Goulden Trust, of which he has been the patron since 2000; the charity, which helps children in the Peruvian city of
Piura, was set up following an article that Shakespeare wrote for the
Daily Telegraph magazine, which raised more than £350,000. In 2009, Shakespeare donated the short story "The Death of Marat" to Oxfam's
Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Shakespeare's contribution was published in the
Earth collection. He also contributed a story, "The Return of the Native", to OxTravels, a travel anthology that was produced to raise money for Oxfam's work. In October 2012, Shakespeare travelled to Cambodia with photographer Emma Hardy to visit Oxfam's work. He wrote two articles about the trip, "Beyond The Killing Fields", which was published in
Intelligent Life, and "How The Dead Live", which was published in
New Statesman. ==Works==