I’ve written four historical fiction novels over the past dozen years. I have worked alone, with only occasional comments from one or two friends. And at various stages I have sought the advise from professionals - skilled readers and editors. I've learned that...

The research for my third book began with the so-called “interwar years” from 1919 to 1939. My grandfather returned from four years as a German prisoner of war, a wisp of a man after 1,479 days of hunger and anguish in captivity, weakened and demoralised by the...

My grandfather returned from his six-year tour of duty in South Africa and India in 1906 to a different England to that he had known. When he left Tyneside in 1901, the year of Queen Victoria’s death, the most critical technologies of that era had been the steam...