History, mystery and derring-do - a reading selection

“A cracking tale” – an expression I often use. Stories that make your pulse hammer, your gut grip and your breath catch. You are chasing renegades, fighting in the Peninsula, sailing on the high seas, plotting new conquests, spying for your country, in the arena sword in hand, escaping to a new colony, engulfed in […]

Rome and Washington DC

As I walked past the colonnaded white buildings around the Capitol, the National Mall and the Federal Triangle, I knew I couldn’t be the first visitor to make a connection between Washington DC and ancient Rome.

Both sat/sit on a series of hills and both were/are centres of world power.

The massive scale of prestigious […]

Alternate history stories - personal or grand scale?

Roman-themed stories and alternat(iv)e history stories could drive you to visualise a grand scale; empires lost and won, heroes and heroines fighting in their thousands, declaiming and sacrificing on battlefields and forum, unimagined tragedies and triumphs that turned the world’s, possibly the galaxy’s, history on its face. Epic events with epic challenges and epic poems […]