into any number of mysteries, and puts Shardlake in the way of an endless variety of characters." Sansom also said that he plans to write further Shardlake novels taking the lawyer into the reign of Elizabeth I. He has also written Winter in Madrid, a thriller set in Spain in 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and Dominion, an alternate history novel set in a Britain following a fictional Axis victory in World War II. About the latter novel, a Guardian review called the premise "an invented mid-20th century Britain that has the intricate detail and delineation of JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth, though thankfully described in better prose". Awards Dark Fire won the 2005 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, awarded by the Crime Writers' Association (CWA). Sansom himself was "Very Highly Commended" in the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library award, for the Shardlake series. Dominion won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. In 2022, Sansom received the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the CWA. Politics Sansom was born in Scotland. He strongly opposes Scottish independence and described the prospect as "literally heartbreaking". In his 2012 novel Dominion, his depiction of an alternate history in which Germany wins the Second World War, the Scottish National Party collaborates with the British Nazi state. He stated, "A party which is often referred to by its members, as the SNP is, as the National Movement should send a chill down the spine of anyone who remembers what those words have often meant in Europe". He also pointed out that in real life, some of the party's members then had fascist sympathies. He went on to describe the party as "deeply dangerous, with no politics in the conventional sense, believing only in the old dream that the unleashing of 'national spirit' and 'national pride' can solve a country's problems". He donated £294,000 to the Better Together group which campaigned for a "no" vote in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. He also said that the Yes Scotland campaign had "dubious" financial backing. Bibliography Matthew Shardlake Series Other novels References External links Schoolboy rivalries in the Spanish civil war A review of Winter in Madrid, in Telegraph, 26 February 2006 A wherry across the Thames A review of Dark Fire, by Stella Duffy, in The Guardian, 6 November 2004 Spanish Civil War, stripped of Hemingway's romance A review of Winter in Madrid, by Katherine Bailey,