Congratulations on the publication of your memoir, Natural Causes. What made you decide that now was the time to write a memoir about your experiences as a wildlife filmmaker and environmental activist? Thankyou Ella. I think my career coincided with a sort of Golden...
Peter Tonkin
When Henry VIII Came to Dinner, by Paul Wreyford
We are in a modern suburban house occupied by a boy and his father. The boy is a teenager, with an enquiring mind and a predilection for bad jokes. The somewhat inept father is usually the butt of these and the banter adds to the humorous lightness of touch that...
Paul Wreyford on When Henry VIII Came to Dinner
Paul Wreyford, many congratulations on the book. Why did you choose these particular figures – Henry VIII, Napoleon, Shakespeare and Cleopatra to name but a few? I just went for some of the most famous people in history and from a wide range of eras. Everyone will...
Bellatrix, by Simon Turney
It follows on directly from the first, The Capsarius (which incidentally has one of the most gripping openings I have read recently). Equally enthralling, this follows legionary capsarius or doctor Titus Cervianus, with his tent-mates, his cohort and his legion, the...
Episode 88
The Trojan War with Peter Tonkin | RSS.com
Desperate Valour, by Timothy Ashby
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...
Peter Tonkin on Shadow of Treason
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, by Peter Tonkin
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...
A Choir of Crows, by Candace Robb
A Choir of Crows is the 12th novel in Candace Robb’s enormously successful series of Owen Archer mysteries. It follows A Conspiracy of Wolves but, like all the others, it stands on its own. In A Choir of Crows, Candace Robb carries her readers back to the winter of...
Fiction Book of the Month: Peter Tonkin on The Ides
Peter Tonkin, It’s that time of the year and we’re at the Ides of March – what is it about the assassination that fascinates you? I’m sure there must be many turning points in history where chance or fate seemed to take a hand, but the assassination of Julius Caesar...