The third Jack Telford novel, A Betrayal of Heroes, is published in July 2021. And here's how I tried to build and research his travels and his trials. From Casablanca to Brazzaville, from the beaches of Normandy to the Liberation of Paris. I had three things on my mind - three things which inspired the story. First, at the end of the last Jack … [Read more...] about How I was able to build and research a WW2 background
Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War – Music of Republican Spain
The music of Republican Spain creeps into my Spanish Civil War novels quite often. In The Assassin's Mark, our main protagonist, Jack Telford, is introduced to the traditional Asturian mining song that became an anthem during the conflict, Santa Bárbara Bendita. It remains an anthem for Asturian miners in their struggles even today. Here's a … [Read more...] about Spanish Civil War – Music of Republican Spain
Spanish Civil War – Five Things You (Maybe) Didn’t Know
Brief background to the Spanish Civil War Spain had voted to become a Republic in 1931 and its royal family went into exile. But, outside its major cities, life in rural Spain was still feudal. Entirely controlled by the army, the catholic church and a handful of phenomenally wealthy landlords. Then, in February 1936, a left-wing Popular Front … [Read more...] about Spanish Civil War – Five Things You (Maybe) Didn’t Know
Spanish Civil War – The International Women who Fought for Spain
In the three bloody years that followed Spain’s military coup in July 1936, a few women from various parts of the world (Priscilla Scott-Ellis from Britain, for example) volunteered to serve as nurses on behalf of fascist General Franco’s rebel Nationalists. But on the side of the democratically elected Republican Government there was almost a … [Read more...] about Spanish Civil War – The International Women who Fought for Spain
Spanish Civil War – The Ebsworth Connection and a Forgotten Conflict
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