2019-10-17 10:34
BANKING BY STICKIt is hard to believe that for hundreds of years the national method of accounting carried out by the London Treasurer consisted of taking a length of wood and cracking it in… Read More
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Historical Fiction Author Blog
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Historical fiction author blog about books and history
2019-04-29 22:13
THE DEATH OF A GENIUS, THE BIRTH OF A LEGENDOn the 500 year anniversary of Leonardo’s death, we are drawn to re-imagine the scene in the chateau of Amboise where he died in 1519, recum… Read More
2018-12-23 08:54
The Greek and Roman God of Time was Cronus. The Ancient Romans saw the wandering stars or planets as gods, although apparently only five planets were known to them at the time: Mercury, Venu… Read More
2018-11-07 08:33
Terminus, the Roman god of milestones, must have seemed a fairly useful god. He was the god of boundary markers, and he appears as a human head and bust on top of a column of stone: a deity… Read More
2018-08-26 12:39
When the Vikings crossed the northern seas to England, they took their gods with them. Thor, the warrior god of thunder, slayer of giants, would have been an inspiration to the Viking warrio… Read More
2018-06-05 08:17
Leonardo da Vinci was a major player in the evolution of human understanding. Few men incarnated such a strong, early connection between art and science as he did, and yet Leonardo painted r… Read More
2018-05-07 05:37
As an idea, revolution is an inflammatory concept. It sets in motion violent change, irrespective of the outcome. Most famous of all revolutions was the French Revolution of 1789. It was not… Read More
2018-03-23 08:06
The idea of race is dangerous. It has become taboo to talk about people belonging to a particular race because it opens the door to racism, one of the greatest insults of the 21st century. B… Read More
2018-01-20 07:51
The word prophecy goes back a long way. It has its roots in the astronomy and astrology of ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilisation. Almost as soon as we learned how to write, we lear… Read More
2017-12-02 08:26
The biblical story of the three gifts at Christmas begins with the Magi. The word Magi is the plural of magus, and a magus in antiquity would have been roughly the equivalent of what we call… Read More
2017-10-22 10:05
In England, Ireland, Scotland and America we celebrate Halloween on October 31st with little understanding of the origins of the festival. Halloween is part of our culture, so we celebrate i… Read More
2017-10-08 06:58
The history of the idea of time is the history of progress. The clock changed the world as the wheel changed the world, except that with a clock you can’t travel backwards; time goes o… Read More
2017-09-29 10:48
The motivation for almost all warfare throughout history has mainly been either economic gain or territorial gain. There have been wars fought over religion, but even these have been fuelled… Read More
2017-09-23 06:08
As Christianity spread its influence over Rome’s old empire, with its promise of immortality for those who repented of their sins, the concept of evil and what it represented became a… Read More
2017-09-15 15:50
Sin, as a concept, stands in opposition to virtue. Aristotle examined both these concepts in his writing on Ethics. But he drew the line between deliberate acts of vice and ‘passionate… Read More
2017-09-09 14:32
As the Greek world died away the Roman Empire became the principal power in Europe and the Mediterranean basin. With its blend of military might and relative barbarity, it broke the sp… Read More
2017-09-04 09:43
In his History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell writes, “Until the Punic Wars, the Romans had been a bucolic people, with the virtues and vices of farmers: austere, industrious… Read More
2017-08-28 16:00
In the second century BC, while the Roman Empire was stocking its legions and perfecting its drills, the outlook of Greek philosophers was becoming more and more individualistic. They began… Read More
2017-08-20 11:57
Aristotle’s pupil was a certain Alexander, a Macedonian prince who would grow up to establish an empire as big as the empire of the Ottomans, which would come into being a thousand yea… Read More
2017-08-12 14:21
William of Ockham, an English philosopher, is credited with the principle of Occam’s razor, also used by scientists such as Einstein. The Occam's razor principle says that the sim… Read More
2017-08-06 13:27
READ PARTS I to V HEREAs a young man of 17 or 18 years, Aristotle was sent to Plato’s Academy to learn from the great master himself, who by now had become almost a legend in… Read More
2017-07-28 14:25
READ PARTS I to IV HEREWhile Socrates was defending his opinions in the great halls of Athens, the city-state was falling apart. Wars were being fought, and people were becoming po… Read More
2017-07-21 07:22
READ PARTS I, II AND III HEREAround the same time that Pythagoras was reflecting on the impossibility of irrational numbers and the apparently numerical nature of eternity, across… Read More
2017-07-14 07:38
READ PARTS I AND II HEREOf all the thinkers, mathematicians, geometers and physicians among the Ancient Greek line-up of astonishing mortal men, among the most famous is Pythagoras. As… Read More
2017-07-05 14:17
There was once a city called Miletus, which flourished in the sixth century BC. One of its citizens was a man called Thales, a businessman with a head for philosophy. Thales could be c… Read More
2017-06-30 06:24
Greek philosophy once played a vital role as the backbone of Western Civilisation, and it continues to underpin our world view. But what do we mean by Civilisation anyway, and how did i… Read More
2017-06-21 08:24
From the very first time that pen was set to paper, poets and writers wrote about the subject that probably preoccupies us the most: fate. The past is over; we know it can’t be altered… Read More
2017-05-25 07:32
As John Edgar Browning says in his collection of essays, ‘Draculas, Vampires and Other Undead Forms’, “the story of the birthing of Frankenstein’s monster, in many wa… Read More
2017-05-10 08:02
How do writers find the inspiration they need to shut themselves away for one year, two, or sometimes more, and immerse themselves in a world of their own fabrication? It is a question I hav… Read More
2017-03-16 13:17
What might our world have been like if we had learned the lessons of history a little faster — or, dare I say, if we had even understood them in the first place? There are so many exam… Read More
2017-02-10 13:31
When it comes to writing historical fiction, character is everything. It is character that helps a writer understand events and interpret them, simply because every historical event, unless… Read More
2017-01-24 10:36
Dyslexia, Asperger's Syndrome and Epilepsy are often seen as connected, and some people may experience what is called co-morbidity, which is when two conditions occur together. But that does… Read More
2017-01-15 09:36
We tend to forget that in the twelfth and thirteenth century in Europe, we had our own band of seriously zealous extremists, the church inquisitors – the body of clerics, monks and sec… Read More
2017-01-03 14:41
Surely the greatest mystery of the universe must be how and why it is interconnected. Like a cosmic jigsaw puzzle it slots together in mysterious ways, each part connected to the other &ndas&hell…Read More
2016-12-11 21:49
We often hear how the European Renaissance, or rebirth, came about thanks to the influence of the ancient classical world, but why does any of it matter, and what is it re… Read More
2016-11-29 09:13
Present-day Istanbul was once called Constantinople, and it was in Greek hands until it fell to the Ottoman army in 1453. For centuries the city was the principal capital of the Christian wo… Read More
2016-11-14 17:41
Given the slightly Gothic flavour of The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer, my account of the inspiration behind this historical fiction book should really begin in a cast… Read More
2016-10-27 20:04
When I decided to tackle the myth of the vampire in the subject matter of my new historical novel, The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer, which comes out on November 19th, I knew i… Read More
2016-10-10 17:05
As you will already know if you read my last post, The Barbarian of Europe, the Eastern European peoples, who were once the Goths, carried their legacy of the ‘barbarians’ o… Read More
2016-10-01 11:25
The girl who helps me with my ironing is Polish. She’s clever - too clever for ironing, but she does it because it’s not that easy to come over to Western Europe and find a job j… Read More
2016-09-21 14:18
Following a lengthy report from the Vatican Theological Commission in 2006, Pope Benedict abolished the first circle of hell, known as purgatory. Unbaptised infants would no longer be trappe… Read More
2016-09-02 06:48
There has never been, in the history of popular culture, such a successful phenomenon as the vampire. Love the fangs or hate them, the vampire remains an icon of seductiveness, a monster we… Read More
2016-08-08 07:03
When Florence’s powerful patron and ruler Lorenzo de’ Medici was on his deathbed, he called for a monk to come and absolve him, but not just any monk. The man who came to his sid… Read More
2016-07-27 13:13
It has come to be an accepted fact of life these days that politics is about individual benefit, whether it is the benefit of one particular nation against all others or the re-election of t… Read More
2016-07-17 19:28
I live in Nice, and have done for the past three years. I return frequently to London and Bournemouth, my home town, but by a combination of family ties and work I have become an inhabitant… Read More
2016-07-09 13:01
Many things influence our lives: the people we meet, the place in which we live. For an artist, such influences affect how they see the world and make it into art. Both people and place… Read More
2016-06-28 07:31
The term, ‘island mentality’ may be connected with being an island, but it means far more than just geography. Here is one dictionary definition (urbandictionary.com)'An island m… Read More
2016-06-20 09:51
Fictional parenting is not parenting that does not happen, although that can sometimes be the case, but parenting as a theme of fiction. Every novel is shot through with theme. It shapes the… Read More
2016-05-17 21:03
We take our eyes for granted. How often do we try to imagine what life would be like if we lost our sight? But one aspect of our eyesight we often overlook (sorry) is our peripheral vision… Read More
2016-04-23 22:19
Do you know anyone who is dyslexic? How about Jamie Oliver, Steven Spielberg, Richard Branson? All successful people, and all able to defy what many perceive as a handicap, but which is real… Read More
2016-04-16 06:58
Knowing who Mona Lisa was does not answer the questions that persist; if anything, it augments them. In recent years art historians have accepted that the sitter for the Mona Lisa portr… Read More
2016-04-09 14:08
A man of peace, a cynic or in the end, just plain desperate?When I had the lucky break of talking to Martin Kemp, Art Historian and one of the world’s leading experts on the art of Leo… Read More
2016-04-06 17:54
When we think of a harem, we tend to associate it with the domination of women by men, and on the whole, we are right to do so. It comes across to Europeans as rather a mysterious place, a p… Read More
2016-04-06 17:50
The world finds polymaths worrying. Those who are good at everything are usually bullied, toppled from their pedestals, and criticised. Look at Socrates, Aristotle and Newton. All were criti… Read More
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