The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Timothy Ashby, what first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? I have been fascinated by the Elizabethan era since reading that a distant relative was a top “intelligencer” and English ambassador to Scotland. I lived on the island of Grenada as a young...
Can you tell us a bit about the plot of Turpin's Rival? Even more than Turpin's Assassin, the novel reads like a revenge thriller. Having established Turpin in the first book, I wanted to up the pace and violence for the sequel. Turpin is as much an anti-hero as hero....
Traitor's Gate was your first foray into historical fiction, and you picked the eve of the Second World War and Nazi Germany. Why was that? After writing eight financial thrillers, I decided I wanted to do something new. A spy thriller intrigued me. I was...
The Hidden Village is set in a small town in Holland during WW2. The story focuses in on a group of likeable and courageous characters that are faced with a seemingly impossible task. The community has gathered their forces together to protect the people in danger....
Dick Turpin is back. The notorious highwayman’s is brought to life again in Richard Foreman’s new novel, Turpin’s Rival. We follow Turpin on his mission to avenge his friend Tobias Vardy, who is killed by the ruthless outlaw, James Skinner. The pace and precision of...
David O. Stewart, what prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in? I’ve done five books – four histories and one novel – on the American Founding era (1770-1815), beginning with our Constitutional Convention (The Summer of 1787). It is an...
I have read a number of Ben Kane’s novels and enjoyed them all. Having met Ben during a book-signing for Eagles at War, he then spent several minutes offering me valuable advice for my own nascent attempts to become an author and was a thoroughly pleasant chap. So,...
Elizabeth of Lancaster, the subject of The King's Sister, was a fascinating woman, daughter of John of Gaunt and sister to Henry IV. Why did you choose to write about her? My decision to write about Elizabeth of Lancaster, younger daughter of John of Gaunt and...
Alex Gerlis, what prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in? The Best of Our Spies was the first of my (nine) novels and I wrote it after I covered the 50th Anniversary of D-Day for the BBC in 1994. I spent some time out in Normandy and...
The Italian proverb ‘Old sins have long shadows’ is tactfully used at the beginning of Deborah Swift’s sequel The Silkworm Keeper. Where Swift’s first book in the series, The Poison Keeper, exhibits the nefarious activities of poisoner Giuila Tofana, the sequel sees...
