The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
In 1732 Thomas Fairfax, the sixth Lord Fairfax of Cameron, was reading the Gentleman’s Magazine obituary of the agent to his lands in Virginia, Robert Carter. To his astonishment he discovered Carter was worth, in those days, £10,000 and so Fairfax immediately began...
Between the Clouds and the River is Dave Mason’s latest historical fiction, with a dual timeline narrative set between 1942 and 1965. Spanning continents and decades, this book is a sweeping and moving tale of life, love, loss and everything in between. In 1942,...
If only Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner could sing from the same song sheet with such harmony. Long before the Gallaghers, the Everly Brothers knew how to do number one records, drugs, tantrums and comebacks. Phil and Don Everly were one of the first and most...
Lucy, Clara & Olivia was your debut novel. Was the idea for the book long in gestation? While Clara & Olivia is my first published novel, I did write two novels in the twenties that I never managed to get published. I think of these as my practice novels, my...
The True WWII Story of SAS Original Reg Seekings Reg Seekings intrigued me from the moment I stumbled on him during a spot of channel-hopping during one of the lockdowns. I had never encountered Seekings until I glanced archive footage of him in a BBC documentary....
Dave Mason on Between the Clouds and the River Dave, where did you get the idea of the story from? The initial spark for Between the Clouds and the River came from an account of a former German prisoner of war. Let’s just say that story immediately sent me down a...
Hugh, the Fairfax name is most well-known because of the 3rd Lord, Sir Thomas (1612 – 1671), but what are the origins of the family? The Fairfax family is first heard of in the 12th Century with Henry owning land at Askham near York. Like many people in the north of...
The Divided Island There is a place in the Levant that is divided, its people at loggerheads many years after the British departed, leaving behind a nation of two communities that had previously lived in peace, but where outbreaks of horrific violence have occurred...
What the Quiet American Teaches Us “I’m not involved… It had been an article of my creed,” Thomas Fowler boasts in The Quiet American, Graham Greene’s magnificent novel of Western embroilment in 1950s Vietnam. Not involved, Fowler insists, in the Indochina conflict;...
AoH Book Club: Gavin Mortimer on The Phoney Major Gavin, The Phoney Major changed the conversation when it comes to the founding of the SAS in 1941. How was the book received? I believe it wasn’t very well received in some quarters; not because what I...
