Other Books

My first (and possibly only!) non-fiction book is a telling of the epic battle of Waterloo.  The book will be published in the UK in September 2014.  It will be published in the US in May 2015.   Below is…

1356 is a novel about the further exploits of Thomas of Hookton ,. . . though he doesn’t appear in this excerpt from an early chapter in the novel. Instead I’ve chosen a passage about Thomas’s friend, Robbie Douglas, who has travelled to France with a band of Scottish men-at-arms who are sworn to help the French King fight their old enemy, the English.

THE FORT is about the Penobscot Expedition of 1779. A small British garrison had been established in what is now Maine (and was then part of Massachusetts), and the rebel government in Boston was determined to expel that garrison.

Seven hundred British redcoats were in an unfinished fort, Fort George, and the harbour beneath the fort was protected by three sloops-of-war. Against this the State of Massachusetts sent an army of around 900 men and a fleet of 42 ships, half of which were warships.

Agincourt (Azincourt in French) is one of the most famous battles ever fought; the victory of a small, despised, sick and hungry army over an enemy that massively outnumbered it. Azincourt, the novel coming soon, tells the story of that small army; how it embarked from England confident of victory, but was beaten down and horribly weakened by the stubborn French defence of Harfleur. By the end of that siege common-sense dictated that the army sail for home, but Henry V was stubbornly convinced that God was on his side and insisted on marching from Harfleur to Calais to prove that he could defy the great French army that was gathering to crush him.

Gallows Thief is a detective story, set in Regency London, a time when there were no detectives as such. There was a very busy gallows, however. This was a period when the English and Welsh gallows were at their busiest and, very occasionally, the government appointed an ‘Investigator’ to look into a conviction. That Investigator is my hero and detective, a man who was an army officer, but who, since the battle of Waterloo (it had to get in somehow) has fallen on hard times.