Inspiration
History has always been personal to me. My ancestors were ordinary soldiers whose lives were anything but ordinary. They served across the British Empire — India, Canada, Malta, Afghanistan — and while their names never made the history books, the places they passed through left an enduring mark.
As an airline pilot, I’ve had the rare opportunity to stand where they once stood — at remote gravesides, garrison towns, and sun-baked hill stations — trying to understand their lives, their hardships, and the quiet courage it took to endure them. I don’t write about kings or generals. I write about people like them.
I’ve never cared for the dry, date-driven history of schoolbooks. I’m drawn to the untold stories — the intrigue, the silences, the moments where everything changes. Through detailed research and deeply immersive writing, I try to bring those stories back to life, with emotional honesty and factual integrity.
Some of my inspiration comes from the remarkable letters of my wife’s grandfather, a colonial military officer, whose private correspondence spans decades of scandal, love, and change across France and India. Other times it’s a photograph, a grave, or a place name on a faded map that sets the story in motion.
When I write, I am there — in the heat, in the dust, in the silence after the news arrives. Sometimes the scenes move me so much I have to stop writing. But I believe that’s what makes them real. Everything and everyone has a story. I simply try to listen.