Thank you, 'Romans' Ruth Downie and Russell Whitfield

I love being a Roman writer and being seen as one. Imagine how delighted I was to be included in a list that my writing friend Ben Kane gave to a reader seeking Roman fiction authors. Last year at the Historical Novel Society conference, I had the privilege of taking part in a workshop with […]

Lupercalia – Not an ancestor of Valentine's Day

Lupercales, Andrea Camassei (1602-1649), Prado Museum

In AD 495, Christian bishop of Rome, Gelasius, finally managed to suppress the more than thousand year old Roman festival of Lupercalia. Gelasius’ letter to senator Andromachus taunted the nominally Christian senators who were intent on preserving the Roman tradition: “If you assert that this rite has […]

Robert Harris, one of the inspirations for Roma Nova’s existence

When I first picked up Robert Harris’ Fatherland in my local independent bookshop in 1992, I was fascinated by the concept of ‘what if Nazi Germany had won the war?’ What would have been the alternate path of history?

Fatherland was intrinsically a political thriller. In 1992, the whole of Europe was attempting to realign […]