Book Description: 'Life on Mars' meets 'The Three Musketeers'. A light hearted historical romp with a fantasy twist following the adventures of two friends who find themselves catapulted back in time to the English Civil War and a world of action, adventure and romance! One reviewer called it, "A book that is full of history but also extremely funny and witty. A book anyone can read. A little gem I stumbled across but couldn't put it down." Historical Note: Whilst 'Wyrdegrove' is a work of historical fantasy many of the events and characters in the novel are based on fact. Royalist and Parliamentarian colonists really did fight each other in Maryland. The Battle of the Severn was fought in 1655 in an area that is now a suburb of Annapolis and was probably one of the last armed clashes of the English Civil War, despite happening in America. The activities of the Parliamentarian privateer Captain William Stagg are taken straight out of the diaries of the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony and George Washington's ancestors really were Cavaliers fighting for the Royalist cause.
Author
Despite being born on an RAF base in East Anglia I have always thought of myself as Welsh. Both my parents came from Glamorgan so that was where we went when my father left the RAF when I was four and where I grew up and went to school. I joined the Territorial Army whilst still in the sixth form and went on to gain commissions in both the Royal Navy and British Army after qualifying as a teacher. I decided to leave the regular army to spend more time with my family and return to teaching after a long, enjoyable and somewhat eclectic service career that encompassed learning to parachute; Loan Service in Saudi Arabia; being a UN Military Observer in Bosnia whilst taking in Northern Ireland; the Arctic Ocean; Iraq; Sierra Leone and Afghanistan along the way. The Army funded my Master's degree and inadvertently got me into writing. Since 2005 I have written histories of the Anglo-Irish Troubles that followed the end of the Great War and the Irish Civil War that resulted from the Anglo-Irish Treaty. I have also written an historical novel called 'England's Janissary' about a young Irish soldier who returns from the Great War and joins the Royal Irish Constabulary as well as an historical fantasy novel called 'Wyrdegrove' set during the English Civil War. My wife, Heather has given me much of the inspiration and encouragement that I have needed to write and I would be lost without her.
