Shōgun
by James Clavell
Shōgun, a 10-part mini-series, started streaming on Disney+ on February 27th, 2024. It’s excellent so far (and a big improvement on the 1980 mini-series)
Recommendations from our site
“I was 15, I think, when I read it. I couldn’t believe that no one had ever written other books like it. I remember going to my English master at school and saying ‘What else is like this? I want to read more books like this!’ I can’t remember what he recommended, but I can remember picking them up and thinking they were nothing like Shogun. I was so entranced by the world of the 16th century he created that I’ve really had a fascination for it all my life.” Read more...
The best books on Life in the Tudor Era
Ian Mortimer, Historian
The story told in Shogun, the 1975 blockbuster by James Clavell about an English sailor who ends up living in the Japan of 1600, was based on a real person: Will Adams of Gillingham in Kent. The book was recommended to us by historian Ian Mortimer, in his interview on Life in the Tudor Era. “I was so entranced by the world of the 16th century he created that I’ve really had a fascination for it all my life,” he said.
