On Tour: the International Festivals of the Sea
Events rather than places this week. Between 1996 and 2005, five major nautical-themed festivals took place in British ports. These combined the presence of ships and boats of all shapes and sizes with artists’ performances, displays and other entertainments, and were undoubtedly hugely successful in raising awareness of the role of the sea in national […]
On Tour: A New Angle on HMS Victory
Time to resume (fairly) regular blogging! The recent hiatus has been due partly to various commitments, but also to a sense that I had nothing new to blog about. Recently, though, I’ve done a little travelling, the first in six months, and also realised that I have a huge bank of material which is perfect […]
Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing
The only certainties in life are death, taxes, and the fact that whenever naval history makes the news, somebody is going to get it calamitously wrong. That’s how it’s been here in the UK for the last week or so, where we’ve had the Prime Minister himself intervening in an argument over whether a song […]
Wake Up and Smell the Armada!
It’s publication day! My latest novel, Armada’s Wake, is being published today by Canelo. This is the third book in the ‘Jack Stannard of the Navy Royal’ trilogy, set in the Tudor period, and completes the forty year saga. As the title suggests, the famous battle against Spain’s vast invasion force forms the centrepiece of the […]
The Return of Matthew Quinton
Exciting news for readers of my historical fiction series ‘The Journals of Matthew Quinton’ – three years after the publication of the last two titles, our hero will be returning for more swashbuckling adventures on the high seas during the reign of King Charles II! This announcement is very much a consequence of the recent […]
Mary Gladstone Discovers Something Better than Sex; or, ‘His Deadly Balls’
‘I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth – certainly greater than sex, although sex isn’t too bad either.’ – Harold Pinter ‘Cricket is basically baseball on valium.’ – Robin Williams ‘Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.’ – George Bernard Shaw […]
