Book description
Simon Forman was one of the most extraordinary personalities of
Elizabethan and Jacobean London.
Charismatic, volatile and ambitious, he was doctor to the giants of
the theatre and his 'playbook' contains the first eye-witness accounts
of Shakespeare's plays. Like most doctors he was also an astrologer,
reading the stars for all and sundry.
Constantly on the fringes of great events and court intrigues, his
name has been linked with Sir Walter Raleigh's mysterious group, 'the
School of Night' and with the notorious Overbury poisoning case, in
which the beautiful Countess of Essex was accused of murder.
Also uncovered is Forman's private world, that of a compulsive
womaniser who kept a coded diary, never fully deciphered before, a
record of promiscuity as colourful as the journals of Pepys and Boswell.
Judith Cook spent the first part of her career as an investigative
journalist. She wrote several non-fiction books on social issues,
including an investigation into the death of the anti-nuclear compaigner
Hilda Murrell. She was herself a political and anti-nuclear campaigner.
She also wrote biographies of Daphne du Maurier and J. B. Priestley, a
popular historical fiction series and theatre scripts. She later taught
Elizabethan and Jacobean studies at Exeter University. She died in May
2004.
