Nicholas Shakespeare
Nicholas William Richmond Shakespeare is a British novelist and biographer.
Born to a diplomat, Nicholas Shakespeare grew up in the Far East and in South America. He 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.
Since 2000, Shakespeare has been Patron of the Anita Goulden Trust, helping children in the Peruvian city of Piura. The UK-based charity was set up following an article that Shakespeare wrote for the Daily Telegraph magazine, which raised more than £350,000.
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married with two small boys and currently lives in Oxford.
“What they say here is true. Love is eternal for as long as it lasts.”
“We're none of us, are we, just one thing? I am a policeman, but also a father, a husband for the time being, a nursemaid to a sister who I pray will survive her illness. You are a journalist, a writer, and I don't know what else besides. To look at a person from a single angle is to deform them. Even if Yolanda is guilty...she is also afraid of the dark. And I cannot forget that I put her there.”
“I kept seeing Yolanda on the parquet, two men pinning her to the ground, her eyes loaded with hatred and madness combing her hair. I was stormed by her image and my heart could not bear it. We know so little about people. But about the people we love, we know even less.”
“Tell me. You're a man who understands history," I said. "If you want to start a revolution, why not issue a manifesto? Why not show the people who you are, what you're doing?"He leaned back, grateful to explain. "That's perfectly understandable. Socrates wrote nothing down. Neither did Jesus. The problem with text is that it assumes it's own reality. It cannot answer, and it cannot explain.”
“He was neither good looking nor ugly, and while he would not have turned a young girl's head, someone older might have been struck by his face and the evidence of passion which had left its traces. ~p17”