Thriller writer, archaeologist and traveller
My report on the excavation of Roman buildings on Longis Common is published in the latest edition of the Alderney Society Bulletin. Due to the passage of time I have been able to combine the tentative results of the fortuitous discoveries of 2017, the dig where I was assisted by school students in 2018 and... Continue Reading →
Do one thing and do it well, they say. Well, my profile says ‘author and archaeologist’ so I’m hedging my bets. The manuscript of my new thriller Blackshirt Masquerade is with Level Best’s editors in the USA, and although I have a rough first draft of the sequel, I’m not intending doing more work on... Continue Reading →
The Alderney Literary Festival 2020 was due to have taken place on the third weekend of March, but with just one week to go was cancelled due to the looming coronavirus crisis. I was already out there and brushing up for my panels when the news came that disappointed us all. Rory Clements was one... Continue Reading →
I’ve been quiet on the blogging front, chiefly because I spent August digging in Alderney. Running a dig is full-on, 7 days a week but I found time to sit back see the moon rise over Longis Bay, to watch the stars come out over Saye and enjoy plenty of Alderney hospitality. We'd swim at... Continue Reading →
Some of you will have seen shots of my time spent on the island of Alderney during July. It was probably the tenth time I’d been there to lead an excavation at the Nunnery, but time shifts and this year brought new experiences and new surprises. The Nunnery itself has been reconfigured as a Field... Continue Reading →
It was my pleasure to attend the fourth Alderney Literary Festival this weekend, which incoming Chair Anthony Riches declared to be the ‘Friendly Festival’. It is small but perfectly formed, concentrating on historical fiction, non-fiction and biography. The audience is limited to 50 or so for each talk, so there was barely an empty seat... Continue Reading →
January is a hectic time at Guernsey Museum, as we turn around all the temporary exhibition spaces in three weeks. For me it means checking and proofing all the wall text, and numerous press releases. New Year's Day is also when I like to pitch into the new book - NRT in the case of... Continue Reading →
Following up from the earlier post ‘Bring up the Bodies’, the island of Alderney continues to throw up exciting finds. We had only two short days this summer to rescue as much as we could from an electric trench that ran for some 300m along the edge of Longis Common. The trench was barely 1m... Continue Reading →
I felt as if I was in a scene from a Jeffrey Flint novel. An email came in saying a skull had been found in the island of Alderney, then a phone call from the police concerned they had a crime scene. It had turned up in a trench being dug for an electric main... Continue Reading →
This has to be the best literary festival in the land (if you count the tiny island of Alderney as 'in the land'). Its cosy, its intimate and its focus is firmly on history: historical fiction, biography and non-fiction. As the speaker's room at the Island hall only accommodates an audience of 50, there were... Continue Reading →