The world celebrates and commemorates William Shakespeare every year in April. While any month is a wonderful time to honour his work, November holds a truly special significance.
• It was in November 1623 that two of the Bard’s closest friends, John Heminges and Henry Condell, compiled and edited what we now know as the First Folio. This definitive collection preserved all of his plays, most of which would have been lost forever without that courageous enterprise.
• To celebrate four centuries of the First Folio in 2023, I decided to publish a collection of pseudo-essays featuring those very same plays rewritten for the 21st century. I titled the project The Last Folio, using ‘last’ in the sense of being the most recent. Three years later, in 2026, a second, revised edition of this book was proudly published.
• Now, 403 Novembers after the First Folio, my own modest tribute is to offer the Kindle edition of The Last Folio for free, whilst the paperback and hardcover editions are available at a very reasonable price. This special campaign is valid for five days only.
