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Johan Schioldann was born at Aalborg, Denmark, in 1941. He graduated in medicine from the University of Copenhagen and specialised in psychiatry. In 1984 he took up residence in Australia with his Australian wife. He is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, University of Adelaide.

Professor Schioldann’s research areas have included psychopathological art, pathography, medical historical bibliography, history of lithium therapy, and August Wimmer’s epochal concept of psychogenic psychoses. Schioldann’s DMSc thesis (Odense University 1983) examined the manic-depressive illness of D. G. Monrad, Prime Minister of Denmark during the Danish-German War 1864, in which she lost Schleswig-Holstein and Lauenburg, i.e. two fifths of her territory, and one third of her population.

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Emerging from the long shadow cast by his formidable father, Harold Godwineson showed himself to be a worthy successor to the Earldom of Wessex. In the following twelve years, he became the King's most trusted advisor, practically taking the reins of government into his own hands. And on Edward the Confessor's death, Harold Godwineson mounted the throne—the first king of England not of royal blood. Yet Harold was only a man, and his rise in fortune was not blameless. Like any person aspiring to power, he made choices he wasn't particularly proud of. Unfortunately, those closest to him sometimes paid the price of his fame. This is a story of Godwine's family as told from the viewpoint of Harold and his younger brothers. Queen Editha, known for her Vita Ædwardi Regis, originally commissioned a work to memorialize the deeds of her family, but after the Conquest historians tell us she abandoned this project and concentrated on her husband, the less dangerous subject. In THE SONS OF GODWINE and FATAL RIVALRY, I am telling the story as it might have survived had she collected and passed on the memoirs of her tragic brothers. This book is part two of The Last Great Saxon Earls series. Book one, GODWINE KINGMAKER, depicted the rise and fall of the first Earl of Wessex who came to power under Canute and rose to preeminence at the beginning of Edward the Confessor's reign. Unfortunately, Godwine's misguided efforts to champion his eldest son Swegn recoiled on the whole family, contributing to their outlawry and Queen Editha's disgrace. Their exile only lasted one year and they returned victorious to London, though it was obvious that Harold's career was just beginning as his father's journey was coming to an end. Harold's siblings were all overshadowed by their famous brother; in their memoirs we see remarks tinged sometimes with admiration, sometimes with skepticism, and in Tostig's case, with jealousy. We see a Harold who is ambitious, self-assured, sometimes egocentric, imperfect, yet heroic. His own story is all about Harold, but his brothers see things a little differently. Throughout, their observations are purely subjective, and witnessing events through their eyes gives us an insider’s perspective. Harold was his mother's favorite, confident enough to rise above petty sibling rivalry but Tostig, next in line, was not so lucky. Harold would have been surprised by Tostig's vindictiveness, if he had ever given his brother a second thought. And that was the problem. Tostig's love/hate relationship with Harold would eventually destroy everything they worked for, leaving the country open to foreign conquest. This subplot comes to a crisis in book three of the series, FATAL RIVALRY.

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"Professor Johan Schioldann’s scholarly account of his detailed and painstaking investigations into the early medical uses of lithium and, in particular, into the manner in which this remarkable element was introduced into psychiatric treatment, represents a major contribution to the study of the history medicine. Although the ideas of Carl Lange, a Danish neuropathologist, and his brother Frederik (Fritz) Lange, a psychiatrist, have been referred to by a number of previous writers on the history of lithium therapy, it has fallen, fittingly, to one of their fellow countrymen to establish beyond any doubt the seminal importance of the work they carried out over a century ago. Adopting a narrative-analytical approach to his material, Schioldann has produced a rigorous and erudite account of a fascinating era in medical history, and has managed to do so in a wonderfully readable fashion. Even those with little or no background in medicine will be enthralled by the story that unfolds in this book: a story of the way in which ideas become disseminated, and of the interactions between ideas and those whom they touch. This book will be widely welcomed, not only by medical historians and by psychiatrists involved in the day-to-day practice of lithium therapy, but by all those who are fascinated by the way in which a deceptively simple chemical element led to a revolution in modern psychiatric medicine." Dr. F. Neil Johnson, author of History of Lithium Therapy. London: McMillan, 1984.<div> </div><div>"Armed with a historiography that most medics will empathise with, Professor Schioldann has tackled a hard problem and managed to advance the field. This advance not only concerns the history of lithium therapy, Schioldann providing penetrating analyses of the contributions of the Lange brothers in the late 1800s and John Cade in 1947–49, but also the history of psychopharmacology in general. He has re-mapped the field and shown that earlier maps were incomplete or inaccurate." Emeritus Professor G. E. Berrios, Chair of the Epistemology of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge. </div>

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The Sons of Godwine: Part Two of The Last Great Saxon Earls

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