I am a retired professor of anthropology. I was first drawn to archaeology after a high-school presentation by a Classics master on the ruins of Paestum. I have enjoyed exploring the past but have a special passion for Greece. Because of my working-class origin in Liverpool, England, class struggle and the fight for human dignity has been a leitmotif of first my academic and now my fiction writing. My books explore how war inevitably changes the lives of the characters. I have bachelors and graduate degrees from Cambridge University and the University of Calgary. I'm a Fellow of the Society of Antiquities. I hope you enjoy the books on my list!
I was sixteen when I read this anti-war masterpiece. Till then I had entertained a romantic view of warfare; all the deaths were clean and each death full of pathos and meaning. But as I followed Paul’s journey from naïve youngster to hardened, cynical veteran, I learnt of war’s true horror...and its utter futility. The cemetery scene still lives with me. And the final scene…talk about a climax!
The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see all the realities of war; under fire, on patrol, waiting in the trenches, at home on leave, and in hospitals and dressing stations. Although there are vividly described incidents which remain in mind, there is no sense of adventure here, only the feeling of youth betrayed and a deceptively simple indictment of war - of any war - told for a whole generation of victims.
What can anyone say that hasn’t been said before about this magnificent series that follows the protagonists, “Lucky” Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, as they do battle with the French and experience the utter crashing boredom of sailing a man-of-war that is controlled by the winds and the waves. O’Brian’s attention to detail is absolutely unmatched and yet the reader never gets bored. Fifty engrossing pages can go by and you realise that nothing has happened, and I mean this as a compliment. His writing style is indeed a metaphor for life on board a three-master. I thought C.S. Forester was the best naval fiction writer until I found O’Brian!
This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of a life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.
Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.
It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the…
I actually think that Shaara has outdone his father. Both, of course, weave the story around actual historical events, although Shaara Junior’s introduction of fictional characters livens the narrative up. I’ve enjoyed all of Shaara’s books, regardless of their historical setting, but I chose this one because it was a good way for me to learn more about the Civil War post-Gettysburg and also have a really good read.
In the Pulitzer prize–winning classic The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara created the finest Civil War novel of our time. In the bestselling Gods and Generals, Shaara’s son, Jeff, brilliantly sustained his father’s vision, telling the epic story of the events culminating in the Battle of Gettysburg. Now, Jeff Shaara brings this legendary father-son trilogy to its stunning conclusion in a novel that brings to life the final two years of the Civil War.
As The Last Full Measure opens, Gettysburg is past and the war advances to its third brutal year. On the Union side, the gulf between the politicians…
The author’s writing style is now somewhat outdated, but this book is still very worth the time and effort as Roberts weaves the exciting story of the fictional Langdon Towne through the making of America, from the perils of the frontier to the political squabbles of London. Along the way, he becomes the close friend of the larger-than-life character, Robert Rogers. Its breadth of action and depth of intensity make it a truly magnificent book.
This classic novel follows the career of Major Rogers, whose incredible exploits during the French and Indian Wars are told through Langdon Towne, an artist and Harvard student who flees trouble to join the army.
1184 BCE. Ramesses III, who will become the last of the great pharaohs, is returning home from battle. He will one day assume the throne of the Egyptian empire, and the plots against him and his children have already started. Even a god can die.
Cornwell’s books still never fail to entertain me. His descriptions of battle scenes are without peer and the narrative never lags. If one can accept Cornwell’s delightfully honest admission that he sometimes plays fast-and-loose with the historical facts (he did this in his earlier Sharpe series, as well), then the reader will have a thoroughly fun read.
The first book in the epic and bestselling series that has gripped millions.
A hero will be forged from this broken land.
As seen on Netflix and BBC around the world.
In a land torn apart by conflict, an orphan boy has come of age. Raised by the Vikings, deadly enemies of his own Saxon people, Uhtred is a fierce and skilled warrior who kneels to no-one.
Alfred - Saxon, king, man of god - fights to hold the throne of the only land still resisting the pagan northerners.
Uhtred and Alfred's fates are tangled, soaked in blood and blackened…
The Nazi war machine steamrollers its way through Europe, but an obscure Cretan village stands in its way and says no!
A Cretan village confronts the Nazi juggernaut sweeping across Europe. A village matriarch tries to hold her family together...Her grieving son finds a new life in the Cretan Resistance... A naive English soldier unwillingly finds the warrior in himself...And a fanatical German paratrooper is forced to question everything he thought he believed in. The lives of four ordinary people are irrevocably intertwined and their destinies changed forever as each of them confronts in their own way the horrors of war and its echo down the decades.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
The Road from Belhaven is set in 1880s Scotland. Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small girl that she can see the future. But she soon realises that she must keep her gift a secret. While she can sometimes glimpse…
