The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Desperate Valour is the sequel to Timothy Ashby’s 5* bestseller Ranger, though it works perfectly well as a ‘stand alone’. It follows the adventure of Major Alexander Charteris (known as ‘Chart’), a mixed-race, English-educated son of an aristocrat and a West Indian...
Barney White-Spunner, was your third book, having written previously about the military, why did you want to write Berlin? I first went to Berlin as a soldier in the 1980s so well before the Wall came down. It made an immediate impact. It was not like anywhere I had...
Thomas Harding White Debt focuses on the vital case of the Demerara Uprising in 1823, Guyana, which has been largely underrepresented in historiography. Told from the viewpoint of four very different, but essential protagonists in the Demerara Uprising, Harding’s...
David Cairns’ latest novel The Case of Emigrant Niece is bursting with mystery, action, and adventure told through the eyes of protagonist Major Findo Gask. This novel dives into the changing world of the nineteenth century of upheaval, exploration and war filled with...
The novel centres around the gold rush era in Australia – what inspired you to write about this time period? My first novel came about because I was researching my Australian wife’s forbears who were transported to Van Diemen’s Land in the 1830s. Once they had served...
Charles Dickens and Charity: The most perplexing female I have ever encountered… In the research for my novels featuring Dickens as an amateur detective, I frequently turn to the Pilgrim Edition of the letters. The footnotes provide all kinds of fascinating detail for...
It is hard today to come to terms with the speed of communication that existed some 150 years ago. In an age where instant video conferencing is available to all it can bring some of my readers up short when I tell them that even 50 or 60 years ago to speak to...
David O. Stewart revisits Washington’s political career with two objectives. Half his book examines his subject’s personal and political development before 1775 to show how Washington developed impressive political skills and a clear political agenda. Although most of...
It was General Eyre Coote, an interesting man whose career came to an unfortunate end who coined the phrase “A Wandering Army”. The title presents us with the notion of The British Military Enlightenment in the 18th and early 19th centuries that was developed during...
Early in Richard Cohen’s excellent Making History he quotes his distinguished predecessor, the late John Burrow: ‘Almost all historians … have some characteristic weakness … It is often the source of their most interesting writing’. Cohen’s weaknesses are for story,...
