The New Portneuf Bridge - The Fourth linkIn March, 2024, the Francis Scott Key Bridge across the Patapsco River near Baltimore collapsed after the container ship Dali struck one of its piers. The disaster affected more than 8,000 jobs in Maryland and...

If you’ve read my novel Remembrance Man about the cholera epidemic in 1832, you will remember young Emily singing the Barbara Allen song to her boyfriend Paolo. The song was mentioned in a diary of Samuel Pepys in 1666. It is a traditional Scottish b...

In recent weeks the Polish national broadcaster TVP has been liquidated due to a dispute over the future of publicly-owned media in Poland after the pro-European coalition party under Donald Tusk took power. For a decade TVP was controlled by the na...

Remember the Alberta farmer, Bill Bryson, who died after being pinned under his tractor. Before dying, he wrote his will by scratching it on the fender of his tractor. The scratching said, “In case I die in this accident, I leave all to my son, Bill ...

The Parthenon and the Colosseum are two of the most amazing ancient structures still standing today: a temple in Athens dedicated to the goddess Athena built in the 5th century BCE and the largest standing amphitheatre in the world built in 80 CE in ...

“I will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado, or in steel…” says Touchstone threatening William in As You Like it, Act V, Shakespeare.“He was forthwith laid down on the deck, and had his arms turned and held behind him, one man sitting on h...

I stepped into my local library recently after two years of absence. I went in to renew my library card and to have a look around at the selection. I have been reading mostly the poor selection of books on Overdrive and buying other books that I want...

I recently read David Grann's hugely successful crime thriller (Killers of the Flower Moon) and enjoyed the read. Don't get me wrong, I like his books. I'm an author and I love history, but I'm also a nitpicker like a lot of authors. Grann's crime th...

Back in the 16th century ciphers were used by kings to communicate with their governors and ambassadors in distant countries. You may have seen in the news that it took the Loria Research Lab in France six months to crack a five-century-old secret co...

In recent weeks I have been musing over the terrible cost of the war in Ukraine. Just this last week the Ukrainians announced that they had killed 1,100 Russians in Bakhmut in the last few days. It is estimated that the Russians are losing 5 times mo...

I have spent the last year doing a lot of historical research on slavery for my new novel "White Slaves" (390 pages) which will be published early next year. This has led me to believe that slavery is endemic to humankind just like prostitution. We h...

If you have been reading Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels, then you will remember the Forlorn Hope at the 1812 Siege of Badajoz during Britain's Peninsular war against Napoleon. Badajoz was an impregnable Spanish fortress defended by a large French f...

Did you know that the secret grandson of Queen Victoria was found dead next to the train tracks in Montreal West on December 10, 1907? Henry Locock was a 39-year-old British army officer on his way to Kelowna, BC to meet his birth father, Walter Stir...

The place is the Piazza San Firenze in Florence, Italy. A large crowd is silently gathered looking up in awe at the immense statue of David. It has taken the artist some four years to complete the seventeen foot tall statue, but the result takes your...

In recent weeks I have returned to several of Gore Vidal's excellent historical novels after I read the extraordinary "Lincoln" novel several months ago and commented on it in my blog. "Burr" is a masterpiece of historical fiction about Aaron Burr's ...