About the Author of Shakespeare Retold, James Anthony
Shakespeare Retold is the work of James Anthony, an award-winning author and poet based in London.
His approach to Shakespeare is unusual. Where other modern translations render the plays as prose – flattening the poetic rhythm that gives Shakespeare his power – Anthony preserves the strict iambic pentameter throughout, line by line, scene by scene. The result is a retelling a student can read alongside the original at the same pace, and that an actor can speak with the same beat.
His debut book, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Retold — published by Penguin Random House in 2018 with a foreword by Stephen Fry — won Best Audio Book at the New York Festivals Radio Awards in 2019. You can listen to the Penguin Audio recording here. He has spoken about the work at the Stratford Literary Festival, Manchester's Louder Than Words festival, and the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC.
"James Anthony has done something I would have confidently stated to be impossible." — Stephen Fry
Anthony is the author of nine books, including modern verse retellings of Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, and The Merchant of Venice. Eight further plays — including A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, and The Tempest — will publish in November 2026, completing the Shakespeare Retold series.
Beyond Shakespeare, Anthony writes the Slow Road travel series, beginning with The Slow Road to Deadhorse, for which he has been dubbed the 'English Bill Bryson.' He also tours internationally as a tribute act to the political troubadour Billy Bragg.
More from James Anthony:
Author website: james-anthony.com
Amazon: UK | US
Billy Blagg (tribute act): billyblagg.com
School visits and bookings: contact
All books: Shakespeare Retold Bookshop