Hucknall man who is genuine descendent of William Shakespeare publishes first novel

Dr Michael Heath, who was born in Bulwell but has lived in Hucknall for more than 50 years, and is also a former Ashfield district councillor, has just seen the thriller Seeds of Empires published by Austin Macauley.

While Michael has been published scientifically in non-fictional circles, this is his first fictional novel and is the first of a trilogy he is planning with the second book already almost complete.

But then, writing is genuinely in his blood as the great Bard himself Shakespeare is Michael’s 12-times great uncle.

And if that wasn’t enough, his English teacher at High Pavement Grammar School was Stanley Middleton, also from Bulwell, who was awarded the Booker Prize for one of his several novels.

Seeds of Empires centres around former pharmaceutical international development director Max Hart, who finds himself mixed up in a world of illegal trade in unborn human foetuses, assassinations of senior priests in the Catholic church and serious attempts on his own life as he tries to expose those involved.

Michael said: “It draws on experiences I gained internationally working in the pharmaceutical industry, like living in Milan for a couple of years, as well as working in the NHS.

"Although it is fictional, it has a lot of fact-based element to it as well.”

For Michael, writing the novel represents a lifetime’s ambition that stems back to when he was 12 and at grammar school.

He recalled: “My year group was approached by some American guy, who asked us various lifestyle questions and then he came back every five years and re-asked us the same questions before he suddenly stopped, presumably because he’d either finished the thesis or he’d died.

"But one of the answers I told him was my desire to write a novel and 10 years ago I started having ideas of this in dribs and drabs and about three years before my retirement, I decided to get serious and started getting them all down on paper.”

The book is on sale now through Google, Waterstones and WH Smith as well as through publishers Austin McCauley here.