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 wrote...
The Village: A Novel of Wartime Crete
By
Philip Duke
What is my book about?
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.
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The Books I Picked & Why
All Quiet on the Western Front
By
Erich Maria Remarque,
Arthur Wesley Wheen
Why this book?
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!
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Master and Commander
By
Patrick O'Brian
Why this book?
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!
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The Last Full Measure
By
Jeff Shaara
Why this book?
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.
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Northwest Passage
By
Kenneth Roberts
Why this book?
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.
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The Last Kingdom
By
Bernard Cornwell
Why this book?
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.
