Tracing William Shakespeare’s contacts has become an obsession. I pick my way through a web of friends and relatives, hoping I might find something that belonged to one of them – maybe even to one of Will’s little-regarded siblings. 

My favourite among those siblings is Edmund, who followed his brother to London to become a player. Edmund was joined to his famous playwright brother by blood, livelihood and grief: his only child died young, just as William, too, lost his son, Hamnet. Edmund perished a short while afterwards and was buried in deep winter.

When something linked to Shakespeare does turn up, it can be thrilling. The scholar Marlin Blaine recently alerted me to a find in his personal library: a book once owned by the Quineys, who were neighbours to the Shakespeares in Stratford-upon-Avon. Will’s father, John, served on the town corporation alongside