The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
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...
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...
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...
The Roman I ‘Roman Liburnian!’ called the lookout. Captain Barzan of the Cilician pirate trireme Thalassa looked up, saw the direction of the pointing arm and the sleek Roman vessel it was indicating. He turned to the helmsman, ‘Come two points south. We can...
Peter Tonkin, you clearly have a passion for the Elizabethan era, when did this interest start? I have always been fascinated by history. One of my earlier memories (aged 6?) is sitting in my bedroom in Holland (as my father was posted to Germany at the time and we...
Peter Tonkin proves again there is much to explore within the dramatic reign of Queen Elizabeth I. His first novel in The Queen’s Intelligencer series, Shadow of the Axe, focuses on the fascinating events that led to the Essex Rebellion of 1601, and the rival factions...
There is a possibly apocryphal story about the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. It goes like this. Someone congratulated Rowan Atkinson about his portrayal of Mr Bean bumbling about amidst the antics of the parachuting Queen and the visitation of James...
Doherty & Turney, Gordon Doherty and Simon Turney are the authors behind the Rise of Emperors books, the first of which is Sons of Rome. The two writers, both successes in their own right, have teamed up to write this new series. Peter Tonkin, author of Caesar’s...
In Peter Tonkin’s new novel, the third instalment of The Trojan Murders series, Odysseus greets King Euenos and asks, “Do you remember me?” The answer is yes. This is a world we are familiar with, a well-trod path through history and literature. But using this beloved...
