PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Charles Nicholl has written two travel books, The Fruit Palace and Borderlines; a study of Elizabethan alchemy, The Chemical Theatre, and a biography of the pamphleteer Thomas Nashe, A Cup of News. His work has appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone and the Independent.
The most riveting book I have read this year has been The Reckoning by Charles Nicholl, about the circumstances surrounding the death, at the age of 29, of Christopher Marlowe, the colourful controversial Elizabethan dramatist who was second only to Shakespeare. It is as gripping as any detective story. The reckoning of the title is the dispute over a bill for a tavern meal, between Marlowe and his friends, which was officially put out as the cause of his fatal stabbing. Nicholl, however, has an alternative explanation, and a fascinating one it is. He plunges us into a world of Elizabethan intrigue, of crime and espionage, of double-dealing and treble-dealing. The murky underside of the English Renaissance is brilliantly exposed in this unputdownable account of Marlowe's murder. Review by Keith Waterhouse (Kirkus UK)
