The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Black Horsemen: Numidian Light Cavalry I am currently writing the first book in a new series, out in 2025, centred during the time of the Second Punic War, 218 - 201 BC. It is a fascinating period and one that I previously knew little about, other than some of the...
Adam Sisman, can you first tell us about the genesis of the book, The Secret Life of John le Carré? This shorter work serves as a coda to your full-length biography (although it can be read without being familiar with that work). When did you initially have the idea...
Rising Tide, by Alan Bardos, is the first novel in the Daniel Nichols Spy Thriller Series - the author’s second historical fiction series. Bardos’ first book, The Assassins, was received with great acclaim - this trend was then continued throughout the rest of his...
The Legacy of Foulstone Manor is a dual timeline Gothic mystery that explores family secrets, lies, and how the past can haunt and trap you. In 1970, we encounter forty-something-year-old Joan, who has inherited Foulstone, the family home she was taken away from at...
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of Rising TideMunich Wolf, by Rory Clements is set in 1935 Munich. When the body of a young English socialite is found, Kripo detective Sebastian Wolff is called in to solve the politically sensitive case. The...
Roman Andalusia: The Rise and Fall of Empires Andalusia, the large Autonomous Community in the Iberian Peninsular has plenty of Roman history. Writer Alistair Tosh has examined the 3rd century BC and the personalities who fought there including Scipio and the great...
In your new book Every Spy a Traitor you move away from a World War II/Post War setting and focus purely on a ‘Cold War’ with the Soviet Union in the 1930s. What was it that attracted you to the period? I liked the idea of a series that covered a longer time span,...
Those readers of the same vintage as I am may remember Dick Barton, Special Agent, the television programme at least, if not the original radio series. The iconic music from that series was playing in my head whilst I was reading Alec Marsh’s Ghosts of the West,...
Was Taranto the inspiration behind Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor? The Fleet Air Arm’s raid on the Italian naval base of Taranto in 1940 was the first-time carrier launched aircraft were used to attack enemy ships, in a heavily defended harbour. It has been...
You’ve written about the major events of the 20th century, such as WW2 and the Cold War – the attraction of the period of history, or do go for character and plot first? They are closely allied! However, it wasn’t until I was a parent myself that I began to reflect on...
