To Sea or Not to Sea
I have a fairly extensive set of ‘Google Alerts’, and inevitably, these include the titles of my books. In part, this is so I can pick up quickly on any websites that provide, or purport to provide, pirated copies of my work – and may the providers of such sites. their extended families, their friends, […]
Whale of a Time
What a weekend it was! Weymouth Leviathan, the UK’s first and currently only maritime literary festival, was undoubtedly a tremendous success. A packed programme embraced a wide variety of talks and other events, many of which were attended by large, enthusiastic audiences. From a personal point of view, it was great to be able to […]
The Real Gentlemen Captains, Redux, Part I
In the lead-up to my appearance on 13 March at Weymouth Leviathan, Britain’s first maritime literary festival, I thought I’d reblog some of my very earliest posts on this site, from November 2011, about some of the characters who will be making appearances during my talk. Here’s the first of them! People often ask me […]
Admiral: Compress and Conflate
Long-term readers of this blog will know that I’ve been quite excited about the prospect of a film set against the backdrop of the Anglo-Dutch wars, ever since it first came onto my radar. It premiered in the Netherlands at the beginning of the year as Michiel de Ruyter, and has now been released on DVD […]
The Shortening of Sail After the Battle of Lowestoft, 3 June 1665
To mark the 350th anniversary of the battle, I’ve been tweeting the key events at the appropriate times during the day. However, perhaps the most controversial aspect of the battle doesn’t lend itself readily to Twitter. After destroying the Dutch flagship during the day’s action – a brief description of which can be found here […]
The Rage is Coming!
Cue drum roll…cue trumpets… Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to announce that the next ‘Journal of Matthew Quinton’, the sixth book in the series, will be entitled The Rage of Fortune. But this is a ‘Quinton Journal’ with a twist, because the central character is a different Matthew Quinton. Followers of the series will know that one of […]
Keeping Up with the Joneses
Just in case anybody didn’t know, I’m [a] Welsh, and [b] an author of naval historical fiction. Now, the world contains quite a lot of Welsh people. The world also contains a lot of authors of naval historical fiction. But the number of current Welsh authors of NHF, as I’ll call it for the sake […]
Laugh, Torquemada- Damn You, Laugh!
I went to the Historical Novel Society conference in London on Saturday. This was a very jolly affair, for all sorts of reasons – it was good to see old friends and meet new ones, to have a delegate come up to me and launch into gushing praise of Gentleman Captain, and to attend some very […]
Criticism of Naval Historical Fiction: a Guide for New Authors
A very quick posting this week, as unforeseen domestic circumstances have knocked my work schedule for six (apologies to my American readers for that impenetrable cricket reference)… Because of this, and various trips that were already on the agenda for the next few weeks, there’s likely to be a 3-4 week hiatus on this blog. […]
Kernow bys vyken!
Cornwall has had something of a mixed week. On the plus side, there was the government’s decision to grant it national minority status. Now, whatever the legalistic merits or demerits of such status, there’s no doubt that Cornwall is, and always has been, a very different place. That was immediately apparent to me after I […]
