Hail and farewell, CJ Sansom

 I read his Shardlake books in December 2019 and January 2020, very much in 'what, I'm supposed to go to work? do the washing? spend time on things that aren't reading? wtf world??' mode. I probably won't reread them, because gripping as they were, the last one was brutal. 

I will watch the TV show to see if it can catch something of the novels' atmosphere. 

It sounds as if he had been working on another Shardlake book. It would be wonderful if he'd managed to get it finished, or near-finished, but given that his long illness seems to have been so dreadful, I doubt there's much hope of that. 

Guardian obituary link

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Watching and Reading

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ETA: snippet of interesting/good news just spotted Plato's final hours recounted in scroll found in Vesuvius ash. I've been hearing for a couple of decades now about how technological advances will allow more of the scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum to be deciphered wholly or in part. I'm sure there have been successes before this one – I just haven't heard about them. At a guess, they involved no big names from history. 

In this instance, the reporting isn't that great. [understatement] I've only had a quick look, but couldn't see a link to the research/source. Also it took me way too long to find out that the new information apparently comes from the work of one Philodemus of Gadara (1st century BC Epicurean philosopher).