60,000 miles more Roman roads!

Roaman road near Ambrussum, southern Gaul

Scientific journal Nature has just published a high-resolution dataset of roads of the Roman Empire by an international group of academics that suggests a much more extensive Road network than we could have imagined.

The new map – an online database called Itiner-e – has been compiled […]

A trip to Mel's Dresden

Alison Morton and Anna Belfrage at the Basteibrücke

Schloßstraße, Dresden

Earlier in June, I waxed lyrical about Dresden in southeast Germany which was the scene for several chapters in my latest thriller Double Stakes. Never having been there, I had written heroine Mel and hero Jeff’s scenes using Google Maps.

What a shocking admission!

Moving a character through a place needs […]

The AD 400s and the fall of Rome

The Roman Empire in 395 at the death of Theodosius (Map: Geuiwogbil at the English Wikipedia)

In 1984, a German academic, Alexander Demandt, published a book, Der Fall Roms, and he listed 210 reasons for the fall of Rome in the West.

Barbarians inside and outside the empire, Christianity, […]