In 2004 my friend, Michael Dunn, invited me to his one-man show, Sherlock Holmes Solves The Shakespeare Mystery. I went reluctantly — out of obligation rather than enthusiasm. I’m English but the Bard had never interested me; it sounded like I was in for a depressingly academic evening of archaic quotes. In tights.

Ah, but there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, etc.

Halfway through Michael’s show, I knew in my gut I’d found the “really big thing” I’d been looking for the past couple of years. A broad canvased, emotionally-significant story to sink my creative chops into. I vowed before the show was even over, that this would be the material, the seed, for the musical I would write.

Little did I know it would change my life completely, sending me on a 12 -year odyssey of astounding discoveries which shatter our preconceptions of what we think about the greatest writer in history.

Along the way, I found scandal, subterfuge, a whole modern history of deceit, vested interests, and protectionism. But above all I found the most elegant, perfectly constructed system of cryptography revealing a mega-genius of unparalleled mathematical gifts and spiritual wisdom.

Gradually that old conspiracy-theory question, “Who was Shakespeare, really?”, had to be replaced with a far more profound one: “What was Shakespeare? Really!”

The adventure has been so engrossing that the musical had to be put on hold until I could finish documenting the mad riot of hidden clues that kept driving me deeper and deeper into the most baffling literary mystery of all time.

So far it’s spawned three books:

Dee-Coding Shakespeare was just released in September 2016. BardCode will be released somewhere around the Winter of 2017. The Shakespeare Equation will follow in the Spring of 2018.