In Journey to Britannia I evoke the journey of a new Roman governor of Britain travelling by land and sea from Rome to Hadrian’s Wall in AD 130. It was published by Head of Zeus and came out in paperback in March 2022 (the US edition is called Edge of the Empire, published by Pegasus Books).
During lockdown I wrote a short piece about life and death on Hadrian’s Wall, crossing the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, ‘Regina and Barates, A Tale of the North-West Frontier‘, for a great project called New Narratives for the North East. You can hear me speaking about it in the podcast below. Following on from my narrative about Regina, Arbeia Museum, South Shields, asked me to write a digital sound story for children, for which I also took Regina’s tombstone as the starting point.
I also enjoy writing about historic buildings, great and small. I worked at English Heritage for over a decade, where I launched a new series of 90+ guidebooks, as well as other print and digital publications, including the Story of England online, which I devised and commissioned. One of the most intriguing places I visited was Great Yarmouth, which lacked an English Heritage guidebook, so I wrote one: Great Yarmouth Row Houses and Greyfriars’ Cloister.
I enjoy writing and editing books and articles on historic houses, as well as books and exhibition reviews about the Classical world, Romania, and buildings great and small, for publications such as Country Life and BBC History Magazine. You can read some of my articles on an amazing new Roman villa, Italian vampires, heavenly hermitages and incredible treehouses.
I also help people with all aspects of writing, researching, editing and publishing histories of historic houses, memoirs and guides, from initial concept to print or online publication. Let me know if I can help with your project.