Cover Story
I’m delighted to be able to headline this week’s post by revealing the cover of the new Quinton novel, The Battle of All The Ages, which is number five in the series and is due to be published in the UK in June. Thanks to my publishers, Old Street, for doing such a tremendous job, and […]
Going Dark
This will be the last post for a few weeks, unless [a] I get particularly worked up about some idiocy or other and decide to rant about it, [b] something really interesting emerges from my research, or [c] some of my potential guest bloggers send in contributions. Regular readers will know that I did this […]
Every Man Jack of Them
When we think of the great movies of the sailing navy, we think of the likes of Gregory Peck stiffening his upper lip to notable effect in Captain Horatio Hornblower; of Laurence Olivier’s Nelson romancing Vivien Leigh’s Emma in That Hamilton Woman; of Russell Crowe’s Jack Aubrey bearing a remarkable resemblance to his Robin Hood and […]
The Dai is Cast
All novelists have a secret fantasy. Actually, it’s not terribly secret. It’s the cast list. Yes, admit it, my fellow authors, you know what I’m talking about. That cast list. The one for the film of your book – the lavish Hollywood spectacular or BBC mini-series based on our purple prose, the prize that we all dream about. […]
Enter the Lion
A short blog this week, but one that marks a big event – The Lion of Midnight, fourth of the ‘Journals of Matthew Quinton’, is due to be published in the UK on 23 April! You can read the first chapter on my website. Lion marks a bit of a departure from the previous books in […]
Endless Poetry
‘…this damned war: the mud, the noise, the endless poetry.’ (Lord Flashheart, Blackadder Goes Forth) There are very, very few similarities between the First World War and the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-7). One of them, arguably, is that both wars generated a substantial amount of memorable poetry, albeit of very different kinds. Having known and loved […]
Pepys Show
I was going to have a week off blogging. After doing five posts in a week for the Orkney and Shetland road trip, then another extra one to mark the rediscovery of King Richard III, I thought I deserved to put my feet up, or at most to do a nice short light-hearted post about […]
Merry Christmas, Restoration Navy Style
Henry Teonge, a Warwickshire clergyman, was fifty-five when he first went to sea as a naval chaplain, presumably forced into the job by the extent of his debts. In 1675 he joined the Fourth Rate Assistance, commanded by William Houlding, which was despatched to the Mediterranean as part of Sir John Narbrough’s fleet, operating against […]
Jester Minute
All authors start somewhere. I’m not quite sure when or why I got the bug, but it was certainly very early on. My mother relates how my infants school teacher (ages 4-6) told her that she loved reading my stories: whereas a lot of the kids turned out a paragraph or two about bunnies, I’d […]
