Last year I realized that this year, 2022, would be the 25th anniversary of the first publication of Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45. I approached the publisher, Penguin Random House, and suggested a special edition to mark this milestone. I’m delighted to say that the new edition will be available from...
Dance to the Storm
Dance to the Storm will be published as a Kindle ebook this Thursday, 20th February, paperback and audiobook publication to follow. You can pre-order here. You don’t have to have read Gathering Storm first but if you would like to, the ebook version is on at 99p for a limited period to celebrate publication of...
Book Week Scotland 2018
I’ll be speaking at three events during this year’s Book Week Scotland, on 2018’s theme of ‘Rebel’ and how I’ve explored this in my writing, past, current and future. I have an exciting new project underway. Firstly, I’ll be at Huntly Library in Aberdeenshire on Tuesday 20th November at 6.30 pm. Then I’ll...
The Scottish Warrior: Event at the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen
Looking forward to speaking about Jacobite men as well as Jacobite women as part of a panel at the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen next Monday, 6th November, on the subject of ‘The Scottish Warrior in Commemorations, Museums and Politics.’ This is a free event but booking is required here. Doors open at 5.30,...
A Scottish Nurse in the White War: The Italian Alps, 1917-1918.
In the Sunday Herald of 22nd October 2017, Angus Robertson, SNP MP and journalist, wrote a moving article on the ‘forgotten front’ of the First World War, the struggle between Italian forces and those of the soon-to-crumble Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because so much of the fighting took place in the snows of the foothills of...
Revisiting the Jacobites – The History Behind the History
On Thursday 12th October, from 18.30 – 20.00 (doors open 18.15), I’ll be one of a panel addressing different aspects of the 1745 Jacobite Rising at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. I’ll be talking about the women I wrote about in Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45, Arran Johnston will...
Damn Rebel Bitches: Research Then & Now
When I did my research for Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45 twenty years ago, that had to be done the hard, albeit very enjoyable way. I’ve just written an article on the subject for Historia, the online magazine of the Historical Writers’ Association, which you can read below. Damn’ Rebel Bitches:...
The Battle of Prestonpans and the Gallant Colonel Gardiner
Colonel James Gardiner was a Scotsman and a career soldier in the British Army. By a twist of fate, the man who travelled extensively during his military career was struck down at Prestonpans in a battle that exploded no distance from his own front door. Gardiner was quite a character. In his youth he...
Always a thrill to see my books on the shelf
It’s always a thrill to see my books on the shelves, especially when I’m in such good company as I am here at the National Trust for Scotland visitor Scotland at Culloden. I was there last week to sign copies of my Jacobite romantic suspense novel, Gathering Storm. The gift shop at Culloden has...
Escape from the Jacobites at Doune Castle
Doune Castle near Stirling has starred in Monthy Python & the Holy Grail and the pilot episode of Games of Thrones. In Starz TV’s adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s phenomenally successful Outlander novels, Doune plays Castle Leoch. As itself, this mighty mediaeval Scottish castle played host to a daring escape of prisoners in January 1746. One of those men was...