I stumbled upon this site when Googling for Starbuck (checking if you’d written anymore yet… sadly not after 10 years!) and was disappointed to see that most of the site was very much out of date. However when I dug further, I found that actually you’re really good at replying to fans etc. Perhaps you could make this area more important/easier to find; particularly as some of the answers are quite interesting. Were you historically trained or did you just ‘grow into’ being a historical writer?

Also do you ever return to the UK for book sessions/lectures etc? Lastly, I wish to say that I find your books a useful companion to other factual writers, such as Holmes, Hobsbaum, Schama etc and in some ways superior…. you avoid getting bogged down with quite as much detail. Tom