The Tiger and the Cauldron To coincide with the release today of the new paperback, here are two final teasers from the story! ' Dawn came too quickly for Hassan. He had hardly slept but his body felt warm and alive. Doquz lay close to him beneath the double blanket, her wounded arm still wrapped …
Category: heroic deeds
Adventure, Love and Legend (2)
Another little plug today for my paperback novel, The Gammadion. 'The envoy shivered. It was only a month till the solstice and, though no snow had fallen, the sharp mountain wind chilled his bones. It was true he had known colder winters, but the circumstances of this journey were exceptional. Fear played a part in …
Adventure, Love and Legend
I hope readers will allow me today to give a boost to my most recently published historical novel. Entitled The Gammadion, it is a completely new and revised edition of an earlier book from 2002, and is a prequel to The Tiger and the Cauldron which I serialised here recently. The cover of the book …
STORYLAND
A New Mythology of Britain by Amy Jeffs 'Arthur had a sister called Anna. She married the pagan King Loth of Lothian. Their sons' names were Gawain and Mordred. They had a daughter too, whose name was Teneu. As soon as they were old enough, the boys had migrated south to fight for Arthur. Teneu …
ARIADNE
by Jennifer Saint 'What do you imagine the wedding of an Olympian god to be like? The bridal pair descending in a chariot of clouds, pulled by silver horses?' Ariadne - library edition The author's debut novel, Ariadne is a retelling of an old Greek myth or, more correctly, two, maybe three, intertwined myths. First, …
Art vs. Morality
Literary standards, like everything else, have changed a lot in the past century or so. Writers are not like crystal-gazers. They can fantasize and invent improbable futures, but in the end they can only write in, and of, the world as it is in their own times. And the world of the past is not …
New Troy
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller Over the past few days, I have been revisiting the classic poems of ancient Greece, and watching a series of lectures on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. These epic poems always bear retelling. Whether in the original format or recast in one of the many variations that have appeared …
Saintly Con in Santa Cruz
Revisiting the favourite literature of our childhood and youth can often bring disappointment. There may be several reasons why this is so. For one thing, reading tastes change as we grow older. The world changes too; ideas about what is acceptable, amusing, moral, and so on, do not remain fixed. That is not to say …
Ivanhoe
by Sir Walter Scott A Review ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian?’ What, you …
A Romance of Exmoor
Lorna Doone By R.D. Blackmore RD Blackmore was a prolific and popular writer of novels and poetry during the mid-nineteenth century. Lorna Doone is the only one of his works to survive the test of time. Lorna Doone is a love story. Yet in choosing its subtitle, A Romance of Exmoor, the author had something …