ABOUT ME

For anyone who has enjoyed, or who is considering reading, anything I have written, here is a little information about me.

By the publication date of my debut novel, The Lion at the Threshold, I will be a few months off my 75^th birthday. As an author, I have some catching up to do; I have just completed a second novel, Shadow of a Traitor, and am embarking on a third. I find the process so compelling that I foresee a regular output for as long as I am able.

As a historical novelist, I start with two handicaps. First, I hated history with a passion at school – even today the mention of the Corn Laws brings me out in a rash – something that, guided by some inspirational writers, has taken me a long time to overcome. Secondly, while I have always been good at research and writing, with a great love of words and languages, creative imagination does not come so easily.

The beauty of history, however, is that the characters I write about are much more interesting than anything I could devise: they supply their own plots. My skill, if I may call it that, is to find the sources, extract the detail, think about what is (and often what is not) said about them, and then tell the story. If information or motives are missing, then as a novelist I will provide my own, although I will always admit to it in the author’s note. If there is doubt, I will happily exploit it, but I won’t override clearly documented dates or known facts just for the sake of a good story.

The seed for my late-flowering writing career was sewn when, at a party a few years ago, I was asked to help catalogue some old photos and documents relating to the village where I live. Every rabbit hole that presented itself led to another interesting story and some hitherto unknown detail. One tunnel even took me to Constantinople and the incredible story told in The Lion at the Threshold. My research on the village resulted in a local history website and, as the material grew, to a couple of short books. Walking the Hamster to the Fountain (you’ll have to read it to appreciate the title!) recounts the village history, while At the Going Down of the Sun reveals my discoveries about the lives of the eighteen men commemorated on our war memorial.

There are so many people to thank, and each will have their place in the books. Underpinning all is the late Hilary Mantel, whose incomparable Wolf Hall trilogy not only kindled the flame for me but also showed me the kind of writing I could – however dimly – aspire to.

In the sixty or more years between the traumas of school history and publishing a novel on the sixteenth century Ottoman empire, I managed to acquire a degree in Human Sciences from Oxford and – in much later life and purely for interest – another in Law from Nottingham Law School. I have worked, at various times, as a geneticist, a lorry driver, a housing worker, a chartered accountant, and a director of a professional body. With my wife Alison, I set up and sold four children’s nurseries and a vocational training company.

Alison and I have been married since 1987 (we celebrated our tenth anniversary together with a wedding). We have three wonderful grown-up daughters who, to our joy, get on as well with each other as they do with us; and we live in the lovely countryside of north-west Essex, just close enough to Stansted airport to allow us to indulge our love of travelling. Until my passion for writing took over, much of our travel involved following England’s cricketers to exotic locations. Now I also have the excuse for research trips to Venice, Istanbul and – for my current novel – Morocco.

And now I must get back to work. I feel a novel about the Corn Laws coming on….