My review of James Shapiro’s Contested Will, and Doug Stewart’s The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare, in today’s Independent on Sunday:

For so long, I had not wanted to get drawn in to this unanswerable debate. No more. Now I’m out and proud. Shapiro’s is an important book, which goes a long way towards putting an end to the authorship question once and for all. Bring on the conspiracy theorists, I have met their nemesis, and its name shall be Contested Will.

So it was with eagerness that I turned to Doug Stewart’s The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare, keen to delve deeper into one of the stories that Shapiro thrillingly covers in a dozen pages: the story of the forger William Henry Ireland.

Click here to read the review in full…