Nicholas Shakespeare

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Nicholas William Richmond Shakespeare (born March 3, 1957 in Worcester) is a British journalist and writer. Born to a diplomat, Shakespeare grew up in the Far East and in South America. He was educated at the Dragon School preparatory school then Winchester College and Cambridge and 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.

His 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). Other less well known works from this period are The Men Who Would Be King (1984), Londoners (1986) and The High Flyer (1993). 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) and a travel book, In Tasmania (2004).

Shakespeare has also produced several extended biographies for television on Evelyn Waugh, Mario Vargas Llosa, Bruce Chatwin and on the actor Dirk Bogarde (Arena 2001, BAFTA Best Arts Documentary Award, RTS Best Documentary Award). The Dancer Upstairs was made into a film in 2002 for which Shakespeare wrote the screenplay and which John Malkovich directed. Shakespeare was nominated as one of Granta's Best of British Young Novelists in 1993 and has written articles for Granta, the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement among others.

Shakespeare's novels place ordinary people against a background of significant events, as with The Dancer Upstairs, which deals with Abimael Guzmán, leader of Peru's Sendero Luminoso; and Snowleg, set partly during the Cold War in the German Democratic Republic.

In 1999, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.