Journal

Murder in Jhansi, 1915: Major Marmaduke Henry Littledale Gale, 8th (Indian) Cavalry

A few posts back I wrote of the First World War death of one of my great-great uncles in France in 1914. Another death on the other side of my family is recounted in the press release opposite, from July 1915.  Two Muslim sowars – cavalry troopers – went on a murderous rampage in Jhansi in central India and killed four of their British officers, including my grandfather’s first cou sin Marmaduke Gale. Their regiment, the 8th Cavalry, had been kept in India for internal security duties ...

 

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The war to end all wars: Ernest Reginald Handford, South Stafforshire Regiment, killed in action 1914

A little over ninety-nine years ago one of my great-great uncles died of his wounds near the river Aisne in northern France, a few weeks after the outbreak of the First World War. He was one of the ‘Old Contemptibles’, the regular soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force which was all but destroyed by the end of that year, among the first of some eight million men of all sides killed by the time of the Armistice on 11 November 1918 ...

 

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PHARAOH: a Canadian Mohawk on the Nile

Of all the larger-than-life character portraits that have entered popular memory from the 1884-5 British Nile campaign – the future Lord Kitchener, a desert spy, disguised as an Arab and carrying a cyanide tablet in case of capture; the wiry and imperturbable General Wolseley, sticking to his plans against the odds; the extraordinary Colonel Fred Burnaby, greatest adventurer of his age, wearing a deerstalker and blasting away at the dervishes with his shotgun – none are more impressive for me than James Deer, known to his people as Sak Arakentiake ...

 

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DESTROY CARTHAGE: what it meant to look Roman

My novel Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage begins in 168 BC at the Battle of Pydna, the decisive engagement in which the Roman general Aemilius Paullus defeated a Macedonian army and secured Roman power in northern Greece. The action then moves to Rome for the triumphal procession, a massive haul of works of art and other booty being watched by Aemilius Paullus, his son Scipio Aemilianus and the old senator Marcus Porcius Cato, whose cry ‘Carthage must be destroyed’ resonates through the novel just as it did in real history ...

 

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PHARAOH: the maps

I blogged last month about my pleasure in reading General Gordon's diary from Khartoum while I was researching my novel Pharaoh, and how I particularly relished his attention to detail - describing everything with an engineer's eye, and calculating quantities and distances as closely as possible. One great advantage of this was that I knew that I could rely on his sketch maps as a basis for the maps that my publisher Headline created for the novel, both of which are reproduced here along with a printed original from Gordon's diary

 

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PHARAOH: medals of the 1884-5 Nile campaign

The two Victorian campaign medals shown here were among my most prized artefacts while I was writing Pharaoh, and appear as illustrations in several editions of the novel. My 19th century protagonist is a Royal Engineers officer in the 1884 campaign to relieve General Gordon in Khartoum, and I was thrilled to discover a medal named to an actual R.E. sapper who took part in the campaign. These two medals were awarded to all British soldiers and sailors who saw active service in Egypt and Sudan from 1882 to 1889, and were dated accordingly ...

 

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DESTROY CARTHAGE: interview with David Gibbins

Interview with David Gibbins on The Book Plank:

Question one: tell us about yourself and your hobbies: 

I’m an archaeologist by training, and a novelist by profession. After a first career as a university lecturer I became a full-time writer ten years ago, and have since published eight novels that have sold three million copies in thirty languages. My biggest passion is diving and underwater exploration, but I’ve also worked on archaeological sites on land and travelled extensively. My hobbies – when I can find the time! – include antiquarian books and maps, genealogy, and restoring and shooting antique firearms; in Britain I love mountaineering, and in Canada, where I was born, wilderness canoeing, everything about the winter and managing the forest on our family farm where I do most of my writing ...

 

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