Nature or nurture? The story of Charles Sobhraj
And trying to make sense of the senseless Back in the 70’s and barely out of school, I went on a backpacking adventure across the Asian hippie trail. It was exciting, but it was also dangerous. There was no internet, no mobile phones. If you disappeared, no one would know about it for weeks. And […]
Why Kali isn’t as terrifying as she looks
And what’s her connection to the Rolling Stones? Icons and statues make Kali appear utterly terrifying. She is red-eyed with rage, and her tongue lolls manically out of her mouth. She holds a sword in one of her many hands, a severed head in another. Around her neck she wears a garland of skulls. She looks ferocious, even evil, to the […]
Valerius’s Journey: Ends of the Earth
The world beyond the Roman Empire The journey made by Valerius from far western China to Rome was around 25,000km and took him almost two years. Researching this journey made Ends of the Earth the most challenging novel I’ve ever written. The Roman Empire and the events of 53 to 44 BC are well documented. So is the […]
The inspiration behind Stands with a Fist in Dances with Wolves
One of the greatest and saddest love stories of the Wild West She was christened Cynthia Ann Parker, but she would have told you her name was Naduah, which translates as Keeps Warm With Us. Author and screenwriter Michael Blake said that his character Stands with a Fist was based upon Cynthia. She was born in 1824 in Illinois to Silas and Lucy […]
Napoleon and the Rosetta Stone
Finding the Rosetta Stone During the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt in 1799, French soldiers were strengthening the defences of a fort at Rosetta, now Rashid, in the Nile Delta. They uncovered an unusual stone with strange markings that had been used as part of the fortifications. Their officer, Pierre-François Bouchard, ordered the men to stop work. He sent the stone to Alexandria for further examination. Napoleon had brought a council […]
Marco Polo: Epic adventurer or armchair traveller?
And the man who did it first Marco Polo. His name has become a byword for epic adventure. The man who, in the 13th century, explored the Silk Road all the way to China. Or did he? There are historians who claim he simply wrote down gossip he heard from other merchants. Others have accused him of being an armchair traveller who never went further east than Persia. Some even […]
Genghis Khan, but you can’t
The Mongol Horde and the Silk Road Genghis Khan. His name is synonymous with brutality and ruthlessness. He was responsible for more deaths than Stalin and Hitler combined. His military campaigns sometimes involved eliminating an entire civilian population. 40 million people died because of him. Over two decades, that’s one person killed every twenty seconds. […]
The Hollywood of Morrocco: Aït-Ben-Haddou
From Gladiator to Game of Thrones It’s one of the most iconic images from HBO’s Game of Thrones: Khaleesi being lauded by the slaves she has freed outside the gates of the fictional city of Yunkai. But after the production crew and digital enhancers went home, it remained a real place. Photo: copyright HBO – […]
Xanadu. Fact or Fable?
‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree’ The opening lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem Kubla Khan have led some to believe that Xanadu was an imaginary place. Coleridge himself said that the poem was composed after he experienced an opium-influenced dream. But there really was a place called Xanadu. More correctly […]
The Harem: a Deadly Game of Thrones
You love. You rule. Or you die. She never wanted to be the most powerful woman in the empire. She has grown up as a nomad on the wild steppes north of the Caucasus. The only walls she has ever known are the animal hides of her family’s tent. All that is about to change. […]
