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J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

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About J D Davies

 

Hello! I’m J D Davies, or else just David. I write both fiction and non-fiction, primarily with a naval focus and usually set in the ‘early modern’ period, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. 

My latest series, published by Canelo like all my fiction titles, begins with Sailor of Liberty. It’s set in the ‘classic age’ of naval fiction, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1793-1815), but has the ‘USP’ of taking the French point of view. The hero, Philippe Kermorvant, has an unusual background: brought up in America, where his philosopher father was living in exile, he gains his first experience of naval warfare fighting in the Revolutionary war, subsequently serving in the navy of Catherine the Great of Russia before arriving in France, his father’s homeland, at the height of ‘the Terror’ of 1793. Philippe faces suspicion of his unusual life story, while his aristocratic birth threatens to take him to the guillotine at any moment. Even when he does get a command, he has to contend with a mutinous crew and a malevolent enemy among his officers, let alone the overwhelming power of the Royal Navy. Sailor of Liberty was published in January 2023 and the second title in the series will follow in October. 

My bestselling naval historical fiction series ‘The Journals of Matthew Quinton’, with eight titles published to date, is set in the seventeenth century. This is a little known but hugely important period in naval history: it saw some of the largest battles of the sailing age, the beginnings of a professional navy, the evolution of the ‘line of battle’ and a number of dramatic historical events, such as the Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London and the Dutch attack on the Medway in 1667, debatably the greatest defeat in British history. It was the age of Charles II, of Samuel Pepys, of Isaac Newton – and of my fictional hero, Matthew Quinton, a young man suddenly given command of a warship despite knowing nothing whatsoever about the sea. His story is founded on the very real experiences of those who found themselves in exactly that position – the ‘gentlemen captains’ of the Restoration age. The Quinton books have been highly acclaimed, with The Times describing them as ‘a series of real panache’ while Conn Iggulden wrote ‘Hornblower, Aubrey, Quinton – a pantheon of the best adventures at sea’.

My trilogy ‘Jack Stannard of the Navy Royal’ is set in the Tudor era, following the fortunes of one seafaring family from the Mary Rose to the Spanish Armada. As England looks outward towards new oceans and new worlds, the Stannard family battles against relentless enemies, foreign and domestic, while also struggling to come to terms with the switchback religious changes of the sixteenth century. All the while, though, their greatest enemy of all is the relentless force that, day by day, attacks their home town of Dunwich – the sea itself.

My award-winning non-fiction work has mainly been set within the same period of history. Kings of the Sea: Charles II, James II and the Royal Navy won the Society for Nautical Research’s Anderson Prize for 2017, and was also awarded a Certificate of Merit for the Maritime Foundation’s Mountbatten Prize in the same year. My survey of the late seventeenth century navy, Pepys’s Navy: Ships, Men and Warfare 1649-89, won the Pepys Prize for 2009. I branched out to write my first non-naval book, Blood of Kings: The Stuarts, The Ruthvens and the Gowrie Conspiracy, published in 2010, while Britannia’s Dragon: A Naval History of Wales was published by The History Press in 2013, and was subsequently shortlisted for the Mountbatten Prize. I’m the Chair of the Society for Nautical Research, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society for Nautical Research, and a former chairman of the Naval Dockyards Society.

You’ll find my more detailed biography here, and you can read an interview with me in Quarterdeck magazine here. You can also hear me talking about historical fiction and non-fiction here, in company with some friends from my local author group. I blog on this site on most weeks – you can find the latest posts if you scroll down on this page, and you can search earlier posts using the boxes at the very bottom. You can order my books from my Amazon author page, or in the case of the featured books on this page, directly via the links provided (I’ll soon extend this facility to all my other titles on the ‘My Books’ page). Other outlets are available, though – support your local independent bookseller!

Sailor of Liberty

By J D Davies

France, 1793 The Terror is in full swing. Aristocrats and suspected enemies of the republic are being sent to the guillotine in their hundreds. At this moment of supreme peril, Philippe Kermorvant returns to the homeland he has never known… Son of a renowned philosopher and writer who had been sent into exile by the Bourbon monarchy, Philippe has grown up in America during the Revolutionary war, where he gained his first naval experience. Subsequent service in the Russian navy of Catherine the Great has made him an experienced, battle-hardened seaman. The infant French republic, torn…

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Prize winning

Kings of the Sea: Charles II, James II and the Royal Navy

By J D Davies

Winner of the Anderson Prize for 2017, and of a Certificate of Merit for the Mountbatten Prize It has always been widely accepted that the Stuart kings, Charles II and James II, had an interest in the navy and more generally in the sea. Their enthusiastic delight in sailing, for instance, is often cited as marking the establishment of yachting in England. The major naval developments in their reigns on the other hand – developments that effectively turned the Royal Navy into a permanent, professional fighting force for the first time – have traditionally been attributed to Samuel…

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Gentleman Captain

By J D Davies

The Journals of Matthew Quinton, Book 1 The British Isles,1662 Cromwell is dead. King Charles II has been restored to the throne, but his grip in power is uncertain. He needs the loyalty of his navy - but many of the officers and men were once loyal to the Commonwealth. So the king starts giving commands of warships to young cavaliers with little or no experience at sea...men like Matthew Quinton. Having wrecked the first ship he was given to command, he is surprised when the King gives him captaincy of the frigate Jupiter, with orders to investigate a potential rebellion in Scotland.…

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Revealing Liberty!

05/08/2022 By J D Davies

It's a big day - the cover reveal for my new book, Sailor of Liberty! The reveal is happening pretty much simultaneously on this website and on that of my wonderful publishers, Canelo, so without further ado, here it is - I may be biased, but I think it's a pretty terrific piece of work! Sailor of Liberty will be published on 19 January 2023 and is available for pre-order - here's the link to Amazon's UK site. So what's it about, you ask? Well... As the cover makes clear, it's set in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. For years I'd been of the opinion that in terms of naval historical fiction, this period had probably been done to death. Following in the wake of C S Forester and Patrick O'Brian have come many other series, many of them excellent in their own right, but … [Read More...] about Revealing Liberty!

And So It Begins Again

01/11/2021 By J D Davies

Gosh, has it been that long since I last blogged? Oh dear, yes it has... Sorry for the absence of communication, but it's been a busy few months both professionally and personally, so I'm afraid things like blogging and social media have fallen by the wayside. Besides, if truth be told there hasn't really been a lot to blog about - no major new book news, for example, and I haven't really been doing a lot of serious academic work which might generate spinoff posts as in the past. But all that is changing, and so I'm coming out of hibernation to make two very important announcements! First of all, until now my 'Jack Stannard of the Navy Royal' trilogy, set in the sixteenth century, has only been available in e-book format. But the lovely people at Canelo, my fiction publisher, have … [Read More...] about And So It Begins Again

Highways and Byways of the Seventeenth Century: St David’s Day

01/03/2021 By J D Davies

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus! (Happy Saint David's Day!) The coincidence of Wales' national day being on a Monday, the usual publication day for this blog, proved irresistible, although I shall definitely resist the temptation to refer to the other coincidence of the Wales-England rugby match yesterday. (Oh dear, did I just mention it after all? Sorry about that.) Seriously, though, I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to provide a little-known account of what St David's Day was like in the Restoration period. This wonderful source is from the journal of the Dutch traveller William Schellinks,* describing how the day was marked in the year 1662. Thankfully, no such shenanigans take place these days. Well, not that often, anyway. *** On the first of March old style, being St … [Read More...] about Highways and Byways of the Seventeenth Century: St David’s Day

Digging for Britain

08/02/2021 By J D Davies

I recently watched The Dig, the Netflix film about the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. This has garnered plenty of rave reviews from professional critics and on social media, and I've got nothing really to add to the comments others have already made. The acting is first rate; top marks to Ralph Fiennes for nailing the very specific rural Suffolk accent (something which I researched for the Stannard novels) rather than relying on the generic Zummercornorfolk essayed by so many actors who murder English regional accents, but Carey Mulligan is affecting as the terminally ill widow who owns the land where the dig takes place and there's also a decent turn from Lily James, whose contract must stipulate that she has to appear in every British drama series or film set between 1900 and … [Read More...] about Digging for Britain

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