The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
“One name was whispered with admiration, one quiet voice seemed to cut through the religious frenzy with questions that demanded an answer: the voice of Voltaire” This fact-based novel stars Voltaire, the philosopher, Enlightenment writer, satirist and human rights...
Paul Bernardi, this was your first novel - had you always planned for a trilogy or did the Thurkill's Revenge lead to the following two books? I think it was an idea that evolved over time. I studied this period at university and had always wanted to write about it....
Barbara Josselsohn’s latest novel Secrets of the Italian Island is an immersive and historically rich novel that transports the reader into a fanciful world of the Castle of Poets on the Isola di Parissi, Italy. The castle is shadowed by the looming threat of the Nazi...
Deborah Swift on The Silk Code Deborah, congratulations on The Silk Code. What encouraged you to write about the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Second World War? Like most people, I’m fascinated by those who are prepared to risk death in order to further a...
Mark Ellis. Can you tell us more about Frank Merlin, and the inspiration behind Let Sleeping Dogs Lie - your short story in the Action This Day WW2 short story collection? Frank Merlin is a half-Spanish Scotland Yard detective working in WW2 London. His dark good...
The Harold Pinter double bill of plays by the acclaimed playwright, praised for his social commentary and satire, opens with A Slight Ache. First performed in the nineteen fifties, the drama opens with a ubiquitous pause before an innocuous scene is played out between...
Alistair Tosh, Siege is set in Britannia during the reign of Antoninus Pius. Was the Roman province pacified with Hadrian’s Wall, and so this was a cushy number for Roman soldiers? Far from it. Whilst the south of the province lived in peace and relative prosperity,...
I knew very little about the story of William Dodd before reading Anthony Lynch’s new novel, The Hanging of William Dodd, but I was intrigued from the opening pages. The historical William Dodd was a renowned preacher who was eventually hanged at Tyburn for forgery in...
As the coronation of Charles III approaches, Action This Day ploughs us back into a time of risk, uncertainty and unthinkable steaks. The era of the Second World War might’ve been rife with struggle, but there was more than just that; individual stories, people,...
What first drew you to the story of William Dodd? I was researching Africans in eighteenth century portraits for an article I was about to write. A portrait by Gainsborough and a footnote* in the letters (number LVIII) of Ignatius Sancho stated: *Mr Sancho also wrote...
