Dead Ground is the ninth title in the Spoils of War collection, and publishes – the Gods be praised – on election day, 4th July, 2024. Let’s hope it has a brighter future than the Tory Party.Readers of The Blood of Others will have already met Annie Wrenne on the page. Whatever your thoughts, she made a big impact on yours truly and the moment I set her off in the direction of rookie journo George Hogan, I was fascinated to find out a little more of her past. Given her fictional status – someone I’d invented in the first place – this might sound...
Dead Ground arrives!
Monday, June 24, 2024 - 11:52
Dead Ground is the ninth title in the Spoils of War collection, and publishes – the Gods be praised – on election day, 4th July, 2024. Let’s hope it has a brighter future than the Tory Party.Readers of The Blood of Others will have already met Annie Wrenne on the page. Whatever your thoughts, she made a big impact on yours truly and the moment I set her off in the direction of rookie journo George Hogan, I was fascinated to find out a little more of her past. Given her fictional status – someone I’d invented in the first place – this might sound...
Dead Ground arrives!
Monday, June 24, 2024 - 11:52
Dead Ground is the ninth title in the Spoils of War collection, and publishes – the Gods be praised – on election day, 4th July, 2024. Let’s hope it has a brighter future than the Tory Party.Readers of The Blood of Others will have already met Annie Wrenne on the page. Whatever your thoughts, she made a big impact on yours truly and the moment I set her off in the direction of rookie journo George Hogan, I was fascinated to find out a little more of her past. Given her fictional status – someone I’d invented in the first place – this might sound...
The Blood of Others
Saturday, June 17, 2023 - 10:02
'The Blood of Others', book eight in 'The Spoils of War' collection, publishes next month on Thursday 6th July. My magnificent publicist, Sophie Ransom, has been beaver-busy amongst the pre-launch foothills, and has arranged a gladsome tally of interviews and events. If you're lucky enough to live in (or near) the West Country, it will be a pleasure to meet you at Yeovil Library at 2 pm on 6th July, or at Waterstones, Taunton, at 7 pm that same day. If you're not sick to death of me after that, I'll be very happy to shake your hand at Sidmouth Library at...
Nailing the Voice
Wednesday, May 24, 2023 - 07:46
The novel that launched the Spoils of War collection was a MS I penned back in 2016. Finisterre was uncommissioned, my bid to tunnel out of Crime Fiction, and I therefore had the editorial freedom to try out a number of ideas seeded by years of immersive reading around the Second World War. These, overwhelmingly, were non-fiction books, either retrospective studies of long-ago episodes, or contemporaneous diaries and letters authored by the men and women who fought the war.Finisterre, like most of my...
The Spoils of War
Tuesday, June 28, 2022 - 12:38
The seeds of my series The Spoils of War were planted way back. As a Forties kid growing up in a house without a television I spent winter after winter in the company of countless books – both fiction and non-fiction – that had emerged from a war that still felt close enough to touch. My dad had flown in Beaufighters. My mum had been under the London Blitz. Their stories were the written word made flesh and bred a fascination with how war can touch literally millions of lives.After university, I went into TV. I spent twenty years making documentaries and looking back,...
Advance copies of 'Katastrophe'
Friday, April 8, 2022 - 14:12
Comp copies of 'Katastrophe', the latest addition to my 'Spoils of War' series, are now available at netgalley.co.uk. Hurry on down while stocks last!!!
The Great Co-Ordination
Sunday, August 15, 2021 - 14:57
Just published on the South West's fresh and wonderful campaigning website 'West Country Bylines'....just follow this link......https://westcountrybylines.co.uk/the-great-co-ordination Enjoy (I hope).....
Getting There
Monday, June 28, 2021 - 09:16
Every novel I’ve ever written owes its very existence to a journey. It may be a visit to a particular shop or art gallery or sporting event, and a conversation with a stranger en route. It may be something more substantial, a snatched holiday to somewhere exotic. Or, in the case of Lin and I, it may be one of the many expeditions we’ve undertaken, largely by train and bus, to any number of far-flung destinations that took our fancy. We’ve been doing this for a while, and have a decent track record as railway nomads. Couple a sense of...
How Joseph Goebbels led to Donald Trump
Thursday, January 14, 2021 - 09:38
Joseph Goebbels, and the Coming of Donald TrumpThe currency of fiction is fiction, aka lies, made-up stuff, imagined, invented, not real. I know this because I spent years as documentary-maker, exploring the surfaces of peoples’ lives, and what made them tick inside. These assignments were frequently a challenge, or perhaps a bit of a tease, because so often a real story, the property of a real person, could do with a little tweak or two, and that – I knew – was against the rules. Then, towards the end of this period, I got a two-book contract to write, guess...