The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
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...
Blithe and Spirited The run is as short as Labour's honeymoon period so head over to Ealing's The Questors Theatre to catch their production of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit as soon as you can. In one sense the play is a ghost story, but one which is played for laughs...
Peter Tonkin, can you first tell us about your latest Poley novel? Shadow of Poison follows Queen’s Intelligencer Robert Poley from the aftermath of his unmasking of the Babington Plot in 1586, through the next eight years as he works to counter other, secret schemes...
Robert Harris’ new novel Precipice begins in the long summer of 1914 when Europe sleepwalked into a disastrous war and the stalemate of the Western Front. Harris moves between romance, espionage and political intrigue, placing at the centre of these events the affair...
Leaving Fatherland is journalist Matt Graydon’s debut novel and begins in Halbe, Germany during the inter-war period and is set against the rise of the Nazis. We are introduced to Oskar Bachmann, a shy schoolboy desperate to gain his father’s approval but often...
The first thing that strikes you about KAOS is its audacious tone. Writer Charlie Covell, known for their work on The End of the F**ing World*, infuses the series with a sharp wit and a modern sensibility. The standout performances come from the gods themselves. Janet...
The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 was a complex operation that required precise information about the movement and disposition of the US Pacific Fleet, based at Hawaii. This information was gathered on the ground by a spy named Takeo...
Simon, your novel Para Bellum is set during the Gothic Wars and this is we're towards the end of the fourth century, but we're talking the Gothic Wars, specifically 376AD to 382BC. It is the slow but certain disintegration of the Roman Empire. It’s momentous times,...
Dead Ground is a World War II thriller of the highest order and continues Graham Hurley’s “non-linear” The Spoils of War series, with each book covering a different aspect of World War II. The last book The Blood of Others was set around the Dieppe Raid in 1942. The...
Alec Marsh, many congrats on the new book. This is your fourth Drabble & Harris thriller. What’s happened to our two heroes since Ghosts of the West? The big development is that Ernest Drabble has got married to Charlotte Moore whom he met in Ghosts of the West....
