One of the most searingly beautiful Shakespeare, love and detective stories ever written

ANTHONY SELDON, author and historian

A deeply involving, humane book: Greg Doran slowly unwraps the still open wound of bereavement while chronicling with liveliness and wit a long and varied pilgrimage into the heart of the inspiration that fuelled decades of brilliant work. The conversation between Doran and his life-partner, Antony Sher, especially in Sher's last illness, forms a strong, sombre groundbass to the fascinating narrative of Doran's exploration of the varied fortunes of Shakespeare's First Folio: two interwoven loves

ROWAN WILLIAMS, former Archbishop of Canterbury

Walking Shadow is a book of two parts: the first almost unbearably moving, the second uplifting, as we're taken on a Shakespearean odyssey to the four corners of the globe. Combined, it explores deep grief, letting go and deciding to live. Magnificent

DANIEL EVANS, Co-Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company

From the last journey of his husband Antony Sher which he intimately describes, Greg Doran converts his grief into a solo journey, to see as many copies of Shakespeare's First Folio as possible. He takes us with him across centuries and continents, gathering stories of the eccentrics, scoundrels and scholars into whose hands the Folios fell, speculating about each ink blot, wine stain and possible tear drop that mark the ancient pages. His is the best kind of scholarship, born of true curiosity and openness. A deeply enjoyable and eclectic history lesson with many an anecdotal diversion. Inevitably grief ambushes him at times and then so often it is a quote from Shakespeare that restores him. I can't think of anyone whose inner resources and particular set of talents better equip them to take on this quest

HARRIET WALTER

Both Greg Doran and his life-partner, the late Antony Sher, are memorable storytellers - whether recounting (in Sher's case) his final months, or (in Doran's) a subsequent and global Shakespearean quest. Drawing on both their voices and journeys, Walking Shadow, in telling of 'things dying and things newborn,' is a haunting, uplifting, and beautiful book

JAMES SHAPIRO, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

A profoundly moving memoir about grief, mortality and continuity … This book narrates how, after Tony Sher's death from cancer in 2021, his devastated widower consciously used his continuing passion for Shakespeare as a prompt to find a new life, embarking on a quest to visit all the surviving Folios around the globe. Walking Shadow is at once a meticulous contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare's place in the world, and a searching meditation on how great drama can enable us to understand and to negotiate even the most cruel personal losses

MICHAEL DOBSON, Director of the Shakespeare Institute