Almost 400 years after his death, William Shakespeare is still acclaimed as the world's greatest writer, and yet the man himself remains shrouded in mystery. In this absorbing historical detective story, the acclaimed broadcaster and historian Michael Wood takes a fresh approach to Shakespeare's life, brilliantly recreating the turbulent times through which the poet lived: the age of the Reformation, the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot and the colonization of the Americas. Drawing on an extensive range of sources, Michael Wood takes us back into Elizabethan England to reveal a man who is the product of his time - a period of tremendous upheaval that straddled the medieval and modern worlds. Using a wealth of unexplored archive evidence the author vividly conjures up the neighbourhoods of the Elizabethan London where Shakespeare lived and worked during his glittering career. Full of fresh insights and fascinating new discoveries, this book presents us with a Shakespeare for the twenty-first century: a man of the theatre, a thinking artist, playful and cunning who held up a mirror to his age, but who was also, as his friend Ben Jonson said, 'not of an age, but for all time'.

迈克尔·伍德（Michael Wood），1948 年生于英国， 毕业于牛津大学奥瑞尔

学院历史系，身兼历史学家、纪录片制片人、主持人、作家等多重身份，英

国皇家历史协会成员，桑德兰大学名誉博士。

代表作有：电视记录片《历史铁道大旅行》、《追寻文明的起源》、《亚历山大

东征传奇》、《神话与英雄大观》、《印度的故事》等；历史著作《追寻特洛伊》、

《英国的故事》、《莎士比亚是谁》等。