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Nothing definitive is known about Shakespeare but Bill Bryson’s brilliant research and laugh-out-loud writing makes you feel like you’re actually strolling through Elizabethan England, dodging questionable street food and dodging the plague, while reading the Bard of Avon’s biography. Shakespeare is believed to have been born in 1564 and died in 1616, but many records of his estate vanished in the Great Fire of London in 1666.  More than 80 different spellings of his name have been recorded. The one we all use isn’t even the Oxford English Dictionary’s top pick (they prefer Shakspere). It was fun to know that over 50 candidates have been proposed as the “real” Shakespeare. Some people just can’t accept that one guy achieved so much. By his early thirties, Shakespeare was earning a comfortable 200 to 700 pounds a year – solidly upper-middle-class for the time. He married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older (a man ahead of his time).  Shakespeare wasn’t just a writer – he w...

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