The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
It had been raining for much of the day and the air was still damp when Wally Parr clambered into the glider that would take him to Normandy. It was 10.35pm on 5th June 1944 and Parr’s nerves were on edge – with good reason. He had been selected for an audacious...
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What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? I gravitate to stories and people from the past who, I believe, have been wrongly lost to the shadows of History. Period is not such a driver for me – although my previous four books were from the Stuart...
When I pitched The White Ship to my publishers (William Collins), I ended with a shorthand reference to celluloid success: “Essentially, this is Titanic meets Game of Thrones – with a hint of Sliding Doors.” Tragedy, brutal ambition and chance lie at the heart of this...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on Amazon Articles Click on the links below to read the full article [dpdfg_filtergrid custom_query="advanced" use_taxonomy_terms="on" multiple_taxonomies="name_of_author"...
Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321) the Florentine author of the medieval masterpiece of fantasy-fiction known as the Divine Comedy provides the modern observer with a unique insight into the world-view of a thinking man at the height of the Age of Faith. This means that...
Damien features on a number of podcasts and interviews, discussing his work, which you can find here: History Hit on Acast Midas Culture Shot podcast with Sky News editor Ben Monro-Davies on Spotify BBC Radio 5 Interview on SAS Band of Brothers - Start: 2h19m. Second...
On October 4th, 1983, Simon Sebag-Montefiore and Scott Martin met the Prime Minister at Number 10. What were your feelings about the jingoism displayed by the tabloid press during the Falklands conflict? What would you describe as jingoism? It is a word which is...
I have just finished reading Margaret MacMillan’s War: How Conflict Shaped Us, which I found compellingly absorbing. Fast-paced and refreshingly short at no more than 270 pages of text, the book covers every aspect of war from prehistoric times to the present first...
What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I was surrounded by people who lived through ‘The War’, as people called it, meaning the Second World War, and they talked about it a great deal. I guess that this...
