Detective fiction . eBooks . First World War . Line of Sight . War
Getting the past in your sights – why I’ve turned to detective fiction
On 11 December 2013 by AdminIt’s nine months since I wrote this blog – a long enough period of gestation for any work of fiction… which indeed it has proved to be. After a year in which I moved to a different city, and started a new job, I finished my novel, Line of Sight, and delivered it to its
War
The Great Silence
On 11 November 2011 by AdminToday, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the twenty-first century, people across the globe fell silent, in commemoration of the dead of two world wars. It’s a custom that, in the decades since it was instigated, has become almost a commonplace of public mourning.
Historical Fiction . Literature . Novels . Research . War
Living in the past – the joys of historical research
On 18 July 2011 by AdminI’ve been living in the past a lot lately. In 1927, to be precise – which is when the novel I’m currently writing is set. Every day, I get on the Jubilee Line and travel back in time, to an era when there were no computers, no mobile phones, no televisions and not very many
Anglo-Zulu war . British Army . Literature . The Dark Tower . Undiscovered Country . Venezuela . War . Writing
Writing about War
On 9 August 2010 by AdminI don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been affected by war. In fact, I’d go further and say that there can hardly be anyone alive today whose existence isn’t a consequence of war. War has shaped human society for thousands of years, and it’s impossible to think of a time – our own most of
Anglo-Zulu war . British Army . Historical Fiction . Literature . Research . The Dark Tower . War . Writing
Literary models for The Dark Tower
On 4 May 2010 by AdminWriting The Dark Tower necessitated a good deal of historical research – not all of which was factual. Novels, such as The American by Henry James, The Duke’s Children by Anthony Trollope, A Pair of Blue Eyes and The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, The Egoist by Meredith – all of which were
Anglo-Zulu war . British Army . Historical Fiction . Isandlhwana . South Africa . The Dark Tower . War . Writing
The quest for Isandhlwana
On 15 April 2010 by AdminIf the starting-point for The Dark Tower was a few handwritten pages in a long-dead woman’s diary for 1879, the process of writing the novel brought in many other elements. There was the fact that the story was set at a particular time in history; that it was set in a country I had not at that time visited; and that it was about war. All these facts, I knew, would involve me in a good deal of research, both of the kind that involves sitting in libraries, and the kind that’s about going to see for oneself. It wasn’t the first time I’d done such research – a previous novel Fabulous Time, part of which is set in Shanghai in 1911, had necessitated a visit to China – but it was the most sustained and ambitious work of its kind I’d so far attempted.
Anglo-Zulu war . British Army . Historical Fiction . Isandlhwana . South Africa . The Dark Tower . War
Isandhlwana – The Dark Tower
On 19 March 2010 by AdminIsandhlwana is a disturbing place. Even if one knows nothing of the grim events enacted here, a little over 130 years ago, it still leaves a powerful impression – with its barren outcrops of low hills, surrounding a grassy plain, seamed with dry river-beds, and with the squat, tower-like shape of the mountain, from which it takes its name, looming overhead. It is the landscape evoked, with eerie prescience, by Robert Browning, in his 1855 poem, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’, which supplied me with the title, and epigraph, for my novel, The Dark Tower.