October: the spookiest month of the year
Tomorrow, if you're reading this the day that it was written, it will be October. The days are getting colder; the leaves are turning brown; the evenings are drawing in. It's the time of year when we begin to gather round the fire (or would if we could afford to turn...
The Great Conservatory at Syon House
The entrance to the gardens at Syon House is dominated by the Great Conservatory. That’s it at the top of the page and you will probably recognise it from any one of a number of Regency films. It featured in Vanity Fair and Bridgerton, to name just two.
Reviews: good bad and indifferent and why I love them all
A lot of people say that you shouldn't read your own reviews but that's always struck me as rather strange. Very few writers do it for the money so a kind word from a reviewer is often the most rewarding thing you get in exchange for your creative efforts. This, which...
Tales of Empire
Tales of Empire is free on Kindle next week (12 - 16 September). Here's why you should grab a copy. Tales of Empire is a book of short stories. There are only four, which is why even when you have to pay for it, it costs only 99p. The four showcase the work of four...
Standing on the shoulders of giants
I'm working on the next of the Burke books. All of the books in this series have a fight in somewhere. It may be a pitched battle between armies or a one-to-one fight. (I’ve had readers insist that there must always be some violence, That's surely reasonable for...
Portchester Castle
I’ve mentioned once or twice lately that I was making (yet another) trip to the Historic Royal Dockyards in Portsmouth. I do love the ships there, though compared with a lot of people on Twitter I am not particularly interested in naval history. This time we made a...
Britannia’s Shark: Antoine Vanner
Antoine Vanner writes naval adventures set in the late 19th century as sail was giving way to steam. I was thinking of him last week as I visited (again) HMS Warrior, the first British iron-clad steel hulled ship which carried a full set of sail and a powerful engine....
Time Out (more or less)
I'm away this week taking a bit of a holiday. I did say that I was going to repost old posts on here when I wanted a break and I nearly did that this week but then I thought that I could instead share a rambling stream of consciousness about what I'm doing with my...
The Gothenburg: sailing back through time
When we went to Gothenburg earlier this year, we passed an 18th century ship moored up at one of the wharfs (as you do). It wasn't an actual 18th century ship but an reconstruction of a vessel that had sunk just outside Gothenburg in 1745. The wreck was...
Here’s one I prepared earlier
August 1 was the anniversary of the Battle of the Nile in 1798. I blogged about this two years ago so rather than blog about it again, I'm linking to the old post. It's here: The Battle of the Nile I've being blogging here for almost five years and on an earlier...