Dead Admirals Society Dons a Kilt
Apologies for the ‘radio silence’ last week. Regular followers of this blog will know that I sometimes take myself off to Landmark Trust cottages to brainstorm new novels or just to chill, and I spent last week at the tiny but perfectly formed Glenmalloch Lodge in Galloway. The upside of this was that even by […]
Societal Intercourse
I joined another society last week. Come to that, I stepped down from positions of responsibility at another, too, and the conjunction of the two events got me thinking about historical societies generally, and their roles in the modern world. I think I’m reasonably well qualified to comment on this, and to explore the challenges […]
Bang
I’ve come late to the whole thing about the BBC series Gunpowder. First and foremost, it’s good to see any primetime TV at all about the seventeenth century; and second and, umm, foremost, it’s even better to see primetime TV about the seventeenth century getting big audience figures and plenty of reaction from the critics and […]
Dead Admirals Society Goes Danish
In last week’s two posts, I talked about the lovely Swedish city of Karlskrona, and the international conference on dockyards that I attended there. I bookended the trip with stays in Copenhagen, which I’d never visited before – a shocking admission, especially as my grandfather was there as long ago as 1965, arranging the deal […]
Don’t Mention the Cold War, Part 2
In this week’s first post, I gave my impressions of the dockyard town of Karlskrona and its terrific naval museum. Now on to the reason why I was there, an international conference on International Approaches to Naval Cities and Dockyards, held in the museum. From the moment it started, it was clear there was a […]
Don’t Mention the Cold War, Part 1
Last week, I was in Karlskrona, Sweden, attending and speaking at a conference on dockyards and port cities organised by the Swedish Naval Museum. It was my first ever visit to the town, and shamefully, that’s also true of Copenhagen, where I stopped over en route in both directions. So this week, there’s two for […]
Scandinavia or Bust
A quick post this week, as I’m busy tidying up loose ends and packing before heading off to Scandinavia! I’m speaking at a conference in the Swedish Naval Museum, Karlskrona, and am ‘bookending’ the trip with overnight stays in Copenhagen, which I’ve never actually visited before. (There’s a possibility that I might never visit it […]
Dumb and Dumbnation
Last week, we went to see the new play Queen Anne at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. This proved to be a surprise on several levels, although, as previously flagged in this blog, the casting as John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (a man of Dorset) of Chu Omambala (not a man of Dorset) proved not to be one […]
Come in Number Thirteen, Your Time Has Come
Last week saw the official publication of my new non-fiction book, Kings of the Sea: Charles II, James II and the Royal Navy, from the wonderful people at Seaforth Publishing. By my reckoning, this is my thirteenth complete book, and my fifth non-fiction title, to add to eight novels to date. But even I’m losing track […]
