Back in Harness

What’s this? A new blog post? We all thought he must have died…

OK, that would probably be a fair response to my terrible track record when it comes to blogging and updating this website over recent years. Or even checking the site at all – apologies to all those who’ve left comments that never got a response. I think I’m up to date now in terms of clearing the backlog of comment approvals, but replying to all those containing questions or interesting suggestions is going to take a lot longer.

Goodbye to all that! Receiving a very acceptable liquid leaving gift from Professor Claire Jowitt, my successor as SNR chair, during the society’s AGM in Liverpool, 20 June 2026.

So why a new post after all this time? Two reasons really, one more important than the other. First of all, at the end of June I stood down as chairman of the Society for Nautical Research after six years in post. While this was never a particularly onerous commitment in terms of time, it was always the first priority in terms of workload, and with no new books published since 2024 there never seemed to be a particularly urgent need to blog – especially as my ‘official capacity’ constrained me to a degree when referring to potentially contentious modern maritime topics.

But that’s no longer the case, and that leads me on to the second and more important reason for blogging again. Yes, having convinced myself that I’d never write another book, that twenty published titles was quite enough for anyone, and that I could now consider myself a ‘retired author’ – that’s right, I’m starting work on a new book! This was much to my surprise, but in effect I’ve been commissioned by Seaforth, the division of the mighty Pen and Sword who published my previous books Pepys’s Navy and Kings of the Sea, to write a study of the battles of the First Anglo-Dutch war.

This is a project that definitely excites me. In a way it takes me back to the very beginning of my career – I originally planned to do doctoral research on the navy of the Interregnum, but was tactfully steered towards the Restoration era by Professor Bernard Capp of Warwick University, who was working on his own book on the Interregnum (which emerged as Cromwell’s Navy in 1989, a seminal work which I know I could never have equalled). So it’s great to be back in the time that originally fired my interest, with a chance to explore a war that saw massive tactical advances and colossal battles taking place against a backdrop of political and religious turmoil. It’s a war between powerful personalities, with ‘generals-at-sea’ like George Monck, Robert Blake and the oft-neglected Richard Deane contending on the one hand with competing factions in Parliament and the rise to power of Oliver Cromwell, and on the other with a powerful Dutch state ably marshalled by Johan de Witt and served by outstanding admirals like Michiel de Ruyter and Maarten Tromp.

I’m at the very start of the research and writing process, so this book isn’t going to be published tomorrow. 2028 might be a reasonable bet, but don’t hold me to that! However it goes, I certainly won’t fall for the seductive blandishments of AI – quite the opposite, in fact, as I’d like to rely instead on HI (human intelligence) to help me with this. So if you have any favourite stories of the first Anglo-Dutch war (1652-4), know of connections between its events and a part of the world where you live or which you know well, or know of an obscure but irresistible source lurking in the depths of a local archive or library, tell me about them and I’ll see if I can work them into the final text! f

I might be getting back into harness when it comes to non-fiction, but fiction is a different matter. Every now and again I get an idea for a new Quinton story or for a completely new project, but none of these flights of fancy ever seem particularly compelling, particularly when I remember how much time writing the novels used to take up. Admittedly, there’s a complete new Quinton book which I wrote during those strange and increasingly distant days of Covid, and I really need to do something with it one of these days – but other than that, I can’t see me writing new fiction any time soon. But then, until the last few weeks I thought pretty much exactly the same about non-fiction too, and look what happened there! So it’s a new era for me, and quite where it’ll take me and any readers who want to come with me on the journey remains to be seen. In the meantime, though, it’s good to be back!