At school I was an avid reader of history, including the swashbuckling adventures of the members of the O’Neill, O’Donnell and O’Rourke clans who used the strength of their sword arms to carve out positions of wealth and influence in their adopted homelands in Austria, Spain and Russia. One such, John O’Rourke, joined the army of King Louis XV 1750 and ended up being appointed Captain of the Royal Scotch Guard. So many members of the regiment objected that he was obliged to fight four duels in three days. In the end he resigned the captaincy, writing to Louis XV that “it was a dear purchase to have to fight for it every day.” He then decided to seek his fortune in Russia. It struck me then that this was the perfect place to start a novel and that idea stayed with me until I began to write ‘The Bratinsky Affair.’

The Bratinsky Affair moves from Russia, to France and then Ireland. What’s the plotline?

On a bitter January night in 1976 a house is gutted by fire in the Russian Village in County Wicklow. When the body found in the ruins turns out to be Countess Irina Bratinsky an exiled Russian aristocrat and politically connected antique dealer in France people start asking questions. For budding investigative journalist Tom O’Brien this is the opportunity to launch his career. He teams up with Irina’s granddaughter; Olga, to piece together the story of Irina’s life. It is an investigation that takes them into Irina’s elegant Parisian world and ultimately into the seedy underbelly of Brezhnev’s Russia as they follow the story back to its roots in pre-revolutionary Russia.

What interests you about Russian history?

Russian history has it all. Great Rus, the heir of Byzantium emerging from the nightmare of the Mongol invasion and surviving the reign of Ivan the Terrible and the time of troubles to become one of the most powerful states in Europe. It is an epic story of greed, heroism, ambition and ultimately destruction caused by a fatal combination of hubris and incompetence. At the heart of that rise drama is a story of human tragedy in a world that now seems as remote as the Egypt of the Ptolomies. If we add in the music of Tchaikovsky and the novels of Tolstoy the result is endlessly fascinating.

Countess Irina Bratinsky is a key character – is she based on a real figure?

In 1989 I was given a memoir of a Countess O’Rourke, an old lady then living in England. She was a descendant of the O’Rourke family who had distinguished themselves in service to the Russian Empire and the last of the family to grow up on the family estate in what is now Belarus. Scenes from that memoir stayed with me. She describes how, as the red army approached in 1945, the various landed families fled from one great house to the next and how as they looked behind them they would see the smoke rising over the forest as the houses they had just left went up in flames. Later she describes how when they could run no further these elegant aristocrats in their beautifully cut tweeds sat in a clearing in the forest waiting for death. Finally, because she had a horse and cart she was able to run for the border with Lithuania which she finally galloped across in a hail of bullets as the red army closed in behind her. I incorporated elements of her story into the character of Irina: her attachment to her home, her sense of loss and her courage in rebuilding her life.

There are hints of Irish exiles fighting in Russia – what is the relationship between the two countries?

Generations of Irish soldiers left Ireland to make their fortunes in Russia. Count Peter Lacy from Limerick was a member of the Imperial War Council of Peter the Great, led Catherine the Great’s army in the first annexation of Crimea and played a key role in her coup d’état. He may even have been implicated in the murder of her husband. George Brown, subsequently Major General Count Von Browne, commanded 30,000 men under Empress Anna and played a key role in the Swedish Wars. Count John O’Rourke was presented with a diamond studded sword by Frederick the Great for valour at the siege of Berlin in 1760 while his grandson Count Joseph Cornelius O’Rourke, our hero, led a Serb and Russian army to victory over the Ottoman Turks at the battle of Varvarin for which he received yet another gold sword. He helped to defend Moscow against Napoleon and was decorated for his role in the Battle of Leipzig. A later member of the family Count Edward O’Rourke was the Bishop of Danzig who got into trouble with the Nazis for insisting on appointing Polish priests in his diocese.

Tom O’Brien is a journalist and investigator of the story and our hero. What kind of person is he?

Tom O’Brien is a young journalist with ambitions to build an international career as an investigative journalist. He is also a gay man who is beginning to come to terms with his sexuality. Like Irina Tom has to make choices and the question for him is: what price success? He wants to see his name up in lights and in his ambition he comes perilously close to crossing the ethical line to the dark side. He has to choose between career and protecting the people he loves as he discovers that life is a series of compromises. His investigation into the death of Countess Bratinsky gives him the confidence to live life on his own terms.

Part of the novel is set in Brezhnev’s Russia of the ‘70s, as well as Paris. Was that a challenge to write about?

The problem with history is that like nature it abhors a vacuum and has a tendency to expand to fill the space available. Tom and Olga’s journey into the corrupt and criminal underbelly of Brezhnev’s Russia could have developed into a story in its own right. I had to work out the feasibility of getting the characters there in 1976 but fortunately I had the advice of Seamus Martin who was Moscow Correspondent for the Irish Times at that time. Tom and Olga were on a quest that would take them back to the collapse of Imperial Russia. To delve properly into the criminality of the Brezhnev period would have taken the story in a completely different direction so that element had to be contained. Their cover story of being part of a group tour was the only feasible way I could think of to get them into the country in 1976. It had to be very carefully choreographed.

Which writers have inspired you?

As a student I was captivated by Steven Runciman’s ‘The Fall of Constantinople’ which combines beautiful writing and enthralling history. I was also addicted to ‘The Alexandria Quartet’ by Lawrence Durrell and ‘The Balkan Trilogy’ by Olivia Manning which I am presently rereading. I am a big fan of the novels of Boris Akunin and CJ Sansom. One novel I have read over and over again is Elizabeth Kostowas’s retelling of the Dracula legend, ‘The Historian.’ In my mind it is better than the original.

Will we see Tom O’Brien again?

Tom has just begun to spread his wings so I have a feeling you will. I hear he’s helping an elderly Jewish lady, a client of Jean Philippe’s, to recover a collection of paintings stolen by the Nazis during the war.

Jim Loughran is a writer and the author of The Bratinsky Affair, published by Sharpe Books.