Whether Francis Crook Ebsworth was truly an ancestor, I’ll never know. But he died fighting for Spanish liberalism, not in the more famous civil war, which took place a century later, but in the carnage of Spain’s First Carlist War, just 180 years ago this month, in 1837. I’d already adopted Ebsworth as my pen name since it originally belonged … [Read more...] about Spanish Civil War – The Ebsworth Connection and a Forgotten Conflict
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The Lisbon Labyrinth
A Jack Telford short read (novella) written and published while working on Until the Curtain Falls. Lisbon, 1974. Journalist Jack Telford must hunt down a killer, solve a deadly riddle, renew his acquaintance with an old flame, and survive Portugal’s revolution in this taut thriller with a life-and-death finale, which Jack may survive, but only … [Read more...] about The Lisbon Labyrinth
Sixth Century Britain – Poetry in The Song-Sayer’s Lament
Readers have been asking me about the poetry in The Song-Sayer’s Lament and whether I wrote it myself. I always take such questions cautiously because, of course, you never quite know whether it’s loving or loathing that’s prompted the query. Anyway, hands up. Yes, I wrote it all. But before I get to the poetry itself, maybe a few quick words of … [Read more...] about Sixth Century Britain – Poetry in The Song-Sayer’s Lament
Spanish Civil War – New Novel, Novela de la Guerra Civil Española.
My sixth novel is a sequel to my 2013 Spanish Civil War story, The Assassin's Mark... October 1938, and a British foreign correspondent is on the run in northern Spain, hunted by three different and deadly enemies determined to kill him before he can reach the … [Read more...] about Spanish Civil War – New Novel, Novela de la Guerra Civil Española.
Sixth Century Britain – Who Stole Britain’s Sixth Century?
I paid my first visit to Sixth Century Dark Ages Britain almost fifty years ago. It was Rosemary Sutcliff’s fault, since it was through the pages of A Sword at Sunset that my juvenile “King Arthur’s Round Table” image of the so-called Dark Ages first began to dissolve – the idea dawning that a more “realistic” portrayal of the period may be … [Read more...] about Sixth Century Britain – Who Stole Britain’s Sixth Century?