History repeats itself, I said, history repeats itself! In researching my parallel Roman storylines, I must admit I am surprised by how much things change and how much they stay the same. The politics of the Roman senate, through the myriad iterations of its operation, with consuls, emperors, and dictators, can be seen as similar to the present. Making such comparisons, though, is not especially encouraging. We would all aspire to the notion that civilisation has moved on; ho

As a young boy, I grew up in a world that had yet to fully embrace the conspicuous consumption mindset that has now powered global economies and individual livelihoods for decades. As a result, my attentive parents strictly limited television, and whilst I had a copy of The Eagle comic delivered to the door every week, it was one of the few indulgences, they could afford nor would discourage; I was not a great reader back in those days, something which I am pleased to say I d

The ability to dream, and mine are always colourful and typically off-the-wall, is a wonderful thing. I owe this gift to my dear departed mum, Barbara, as she, too, had a vivid imagination. In her later years, as a touch of dementia began to creep in, she would tell us of her latest dreams, which were often so vivid that she awoke truly believing she had lived the event. Initially, I tried to tell her they were simply dreams, but then I realised she was getting so much joy an

I have been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s mighty tome, The World: A Family History of Humanity; I admit that it has taken me some months, and there is so much to take in from it! What has resonated strongly for me, especially with regard to my own stories and my heroine Rebecca Tempest, is the number of women in the highest, most powerful leadership positions throughout history. It is a narrative that appears to have been lost from around the eighteenth century to now; fro

Something I still find remarkable is that ancient Rome had multi-storey apartment buildings thousands of years ahead of the UK and Europe, where the majority of people lived in primitive, single-storey dwellings. Called insulae, some of the Roman buildings rose to nine storeys, but more typically stood between two and five storeys. They housed the city's poor and were prone to fires and collapse, so they were not without their problems! The highest apartment was the cheapest,

Anybody fortunate enough to have visited places such as Rome, Florence, and Venice, for example, cannot fail to be overawed by the levels of creativity, design excellence and sheer innovations of our forebears. Buildings developed thousands of years ago that are still usable today are mind-blowing! I recall visiting the ruins of a Roman aqueduct, the Pont du Gard Nimes, just outside Arles, France, many years ago. I drove down a typically rural single-track road following some