Benet Brandreth Books in Order

Benet Brandreth has built a working life at the busy meeting point of law, theatre, and Shakespeare. He is an English barrister who specialises in intellectual property, but his interest in words reaches far beyond legal argument. Rhetoric, performance, and the practical force of language run through almost everything he does.

His legal career has included work as counsel and service as a Recorder in criminal cases. That background helps explain his interest in persuasion: how people frame an argument, hide a motive, win an audience, or talk their way out of danger. It is a useful set of tools for a lawyer, and it also turns out to be useful for writing historical thrillers.

For more than a decade, Brandreth has taught rhetoric and Shakespeare’s language to actors, directors, and students. His work has brought him into collaboration with places including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Donmar Warehouse, and RADA. He approaches Shakespeare as something meant to be spoken and acted, not kept at arm’s length on a classroom page.

That practical side matters.

Brandreth has also written and performed for the stage, radio, and print. His one-man show, The Brandreth Papers, played at the Edinburgh Fringe and later in London. Alongside creative work, he has contributed to legal textbooks, another sign that he is comfortable moving between the formal language of the law and the livelier rhythms of performance.

His first novel, The Spy of Venice, puts a young William Shakespeare at the center of a fictional version of the playwright’s “lost years.” Set in 1585, it begins with Will leaving Stratford and finding a place among London players before being drawn into an English mission in Venice. The book treats its Shakespeare as clever, restless, flawed, and very much in over his head when politics and assassination enter the picture.

Brandreth continued that story in The Assassin of Verona. William, joined by fellow players Oldcastle and Hemminges, must protect intelligence about Catholic agents working against Queen Elizabeth. These novels combine Renaissance Italy, religious tension, spy work, swordplay, disguises, and jokes between friends. Readers who enjoy historical mysteries with a theatrical streak will find that the Shakespeare references are part of the fun, rather than homework.

In 2021, Brandreth published Shakespearean Rhetoric, a practical guide made with The Arden Shakespeare and RADA. It looks at how Shakespeare’s language works in performance and gives actors, teachers, directors, and students ways into the plays. It is closely connected to the teaching work that has shaped much of his career.

His novels show the same curiosity from another angle: what might happen if the young Shakespeare used his sharp ear for language not only to write plays, but to survive a dangerous world.