Short of giving you a recipe that includes mixing petals from a rare mountain flower, a peregrine’s feather and three teardrops from a unicorn, there is no clear-cut answer to...

The Last Hour is the first novel that came to me almost fully formed in one image. The hero, Ballista, was standing on top of the Mausoleum of Hadrian. The...

I was born into a family with a strong military tradition on both sides. As a child I assumed that everyone had parents who had ‘been in the war.’ Growing...

“I love following up and coming writers, writers who make it,” said an aspiring author to me recently. It took me a moment to realise she was talking about me....

It’s quite hard to judge where this story begins. Getting my first novel published in many ways feels like a journey I have been on most of my life, from...

It might sound odd to say it, but there is no such thing as historical fiction. And yet if you write a literary novel set in the past, let’s say...

About 15 years before android phones or google came into play, I attended a St. Patrick’s Day party in Israel. Most of us were Scottish, Welsh and Irish. A man...

Some years ago now, in the Sultan’s Palace in Istanbul, I stood mesmerised in front of the Topkapi Dagger. The subdued light of the museum case could not dim its...

My first novel, The Convictions of John Delahunt, was a first-person account of a true-life murderer and Dublin Castle informer, and while it was fun at times to inhabit his...

Early Modern History is something we are all taught in school. From its cultural and intellectual life; society and religion; through to politics and the quest for power. There are...