The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
The eighteenth century - its art and its manners, have always absorbed me. Some years ago when I was researching British artists’ portraits of black men and women and children for an article in a learned journal, I needed to go no further it so happened than to look...
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...
We think we know about Robin Hood, but your story doesn’t follow the narrative in Robin Hood The First Arrow, does it? You know, the one about Robin Hood speaking with an American accent, or wearing tights. My version is based on the early medieval ballads of Robin...
Britain is blessed with a cornucopia of ancient Roman sites and I have had the opportunity to visit many of them, both in researching for my novels and just for fun. From the ramparts of Scotland’s many sheep-grazed, turf covered forts and camps to the World Heritage...
The story of Bonnie and Clyde has been told in plenty of books (some more salacious than accurate it seems). Interest in the colourful criminals was revived through the superb 1967 film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway (there is also an underrated film called...
Peter Tonkin, can you first tell us about your latest Poley novel - and who Poley is? Robert Poley (who appears on the historical record between 1568 and 1602) is one of the three men in the room with Christopher Marlowe on the evening of Wednesday, 30th May 1593 when...
Shadow of Treason, the latest addition to Peter Tonkin’s The Queen’s Intelligencer series, offers a thrilling insight into the Protestant and Catholic divide during the reign of James I. A discord so deep that a fervent group of Catholics would assemble and attempt to...
The wonderful cover of Steven Veerapen’s Of Blood Descended invites the reader to enter a rich world of murder and mystery in 16th century England. The contents within do not disappoint. Of Blood Descended carries Veerapen’s hallmark of exemplary historical research...
The Children Left Behind is the fourth – and penultimate – instalment in her Shilling Grange Children’s Home series, which centres on the eponymous Suffolk orphanage in the aftermath of World War Two. Like the previous books in the series, The Children Left...
Derek Birks, can you first tell us a little about your short story in the collection Triumphs & Tragedies: The Emperor’s Sister, and how it fits in with your other novels? The Emperor’s Sister is a standalone short story which refers to an actual historical event...
