It was going to be a long summer, one of those that burn your eyeballs with the blast of lipstick colour from all those new bestsellers that Goldie Graham just finished stacking like sliced salami along his shelves. I needed a fix. Something new. And I needed it bad. Something to get me through weeks of baking sun and sand, only an occasional dip in the ocean to break the monotony. ‘Hey, what d’ya think of this one?’ said Goldie. When … [Read more...]
Favourite Reads – An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
This is the best book I’ve read in the past year by a long head. It’s very rare for me to say “I couldn’t put this down” though, in this case, I literally finished it in two long sittings. Opening: ‘Major Picquart to see the Minister of War...’ The sentry on the rue Saint-Dominique steps out of his box to open the gate and I run through a whirl of snow across the windy courtyard into the warm lobby of the hôtel de Brienne, where a sleek … [Read more...]
Sixth Century Britain
David Ebsworth's fifth novel set in Sixth Century Britain. A growing number of websites lay out for us a superficially impressive chronology of events and genealogies for the history of post-Roman Britain. But I will ask readers to disregard them. In truth, there are so few verifiable ‘facts’ for the two hundred years from 400 AD onwards that, apart from the archaeology, we have no real basis for recreating a true picture of the … [Read more...]
Jacobites – the BBC Interview
Stuarts, Salford, the BBC and Bawdiness I'd been asked to do an interview about The Jacobites' Apprentice at the new BBC studios in Salford.The day before, I took a phone call from a friend who asked me whether I thought they'd ask me about Salford's Mayoral candidates. I was non-plussed, and then realised that a former colleague, Ian Stewart, was himself a candidate for the elected mayor's position. It was therefore a "Stuart" in-joke. Anyway, … [Read more...]
Spanish Civil War
David Ebsworth’s second novel, The Assassin’s Mark, is a Christie-esque thriller set on a battlefield tour bus towards the end of the Spanish Civil War. Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War At the beginning of December 1938, Victoria Station, in London, saw the strange sight of an army returning from war. Thousands of people waited for the train from Newhaven and the disembarkation of 305 volunteers from the British Battalion of the … [Read more...]
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