William Shakespeare: Vampire Hunter

Chiswick author gives an alternative version of the Gunpowder Plot and the Dark Lady

In a book due to be published in September, Chiswick author and leading Shakespearian scholar, Graham Holderness is set to reveal a previously unconsidered side of the playwright. The new novel reveals that, as well as writing plays and sonnets the Bard of Avon involved himself in saving London from a plague of vampires.

In ‘Black and Deep Desires’ we discover who was really behind the Gunpowder Plot, who was the first person to wear a Guy Fawkes mask and why Shakespeare’s Dark Lady was dark.

Author Roger Lewis says of the book, “ It's as if Hilary Mantel, Anthony Burgess and Bram Stoker got together at a diabolical Writers' Conference and, after a few bottles too many in the witching hours, came up with this rollicking manuscript.”

The book combines historical fiction, psychological mystery and supernatural thriller in a re-telling of the Gunpowder Plot. It is 1604. The plotters are tunnelling under the palace of Westminster but meet an immovable obstacle. Guy Fawkes travels to Europe to fetch help, and brings back more than he bargained for. Who is the mysterious Dark Lady? Who is the man in the mask? Who is going to defeat the army of vampires threatening London?

From a Westminster vault to a Transylvanian mine, from the crypt of Lambeth Palace to the under-stage of the Globe theatre, Black and Deep Desires takes the reader on a tour of historical, psychological and mythical underworlds, delving deep into some of history’s unexplored corridors.

Graham Holderness is an internationally-recognised Shakespeare scholar, novelist and poet. His verse collection Craeft won a Poetry Book Society award. He has published over 40 books, mostly on Shakespeare. He is acknowledged as a formative contributor to a number of branches of Shakespeare criticism and theory. In 2011 he had a play performed at Shakespeare’s Globe, and by Royal Shakespeare Company actors in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Black and Deep Desires is published by Top Hat Books and will have a recommended retail price of £10.99 in paperback and £4.99 as an eBook.

June 18, 2015