Locating Shakespeare's 140£ London Flat

A Shakespearean discovery. "The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up", said Charles Dickens. Well, tremble his ghost must because something has turned up, as we head into the anniversary week of William Shakespeare’s birth. 462 years on, despite the familiar sense that not much is known about the bard himself, we are still learning, albeit in snippets, new information about his scarcely documented life. The precise location of the house that Shakespeare bought in London has been discovered thanks to evidence unearthed by British academic Professor Lucy Munro, who’s pinpointed the exact location and layout of a property Shakespeare bought for 140£ back in 1613 - three years before he died. It was known he owned a house in Blackfriars, but never exactly where, with the assumption that Shakespeare was living out his final years in Stratford, which he still may have done, although still writing plays in 1613, with the tenant he appears to have letted the property to. This significant new evidence is fascinating. Our guests Lucy MUNRO Professor, Shakespeare and Modern Literature, King's College London