Items filtered by date: May 2025

I'm back home on the Central Coast in New South Wales after more than a year away. During that time I've devoted my energies and love to family, friends and writing, and have been warmly rewarded. Being home and looking at all the originals stored away that I can now rehang on my walls, I felt a yearning for something richly coloured, inspirational and new to keep me forging ahead.

And I remembered a painting that I knew I could only obtain through Bluethumb Art. Believe me it's worth visiting their website on a regular basis to see the new works that constantly appear in their well-curated collection. This one is Racing Horse, Running River.

2025 has begun so well for me--may it bring to you all the right kind of riches as well!

We're on the eve of an election in Australia, so many of us have been thinking deeply about our political institutions. Fortunately I don't see them as under threat, but it occurs to me that many of my historical novels depict characters required to make significant choices in times of upheaval. Rebel is a case in point. 

Somehow when I completed it in the late 1990s I was not aware how sincere a tribute it is to the Americans of every degree who fought for their great Republic. I remained fired by admiration even when my first American agent, the cultured and intellectual Alfred Hart of the Fox Chase Agency, warned me wryly that readers in the US might be more ready to remember the Civil War than their hard-won War of Independence. In Rebel I persisted in portraying leaders like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin as heroes, however, and they were seen as such by the brave protagonist in the novel, Viviane de Chercy.

In this extract from Rebel an unprincipled and indolent libertine, the Baron de Ronseul, alone at night with Viviane, favourably compares France’s absolute monarchy with the fledgling republic across the Atlantic.

‘I abominate the form of government the Americans are trying to found. Let me elaborate. In France, in all the countries of Europe, government is undertaken by gentlemen who are bred precisely to do that—to rule. Tradition and our systems ensure that the able members of the great families rise to power—prompted by their education, their upbringing and their sense of duty. Rogues and idlers like myself, meanwhile, attend to their own affairs and are overlooked or discouraged from any interference in the way the country is run.’

He reached out to pour more wine into his class and Viviane was so taken aback at hearing such a speech from him that she held her tongue.

‘In America they’re bent on destroying the traditions they inherited from the English monarchy. In future they will have no provision of talented men brought up to exercise government. All a man will need to give him a place in power is a large enough parcel of votes from an ignorant and capricious populace. In America, mademoiselle, it’s the rogues and idlers from the lower ranks who will rise up from the mire in which they are bred—and they’ll reign supreme, for there’ll be nothing to stand in their way. The consequences for that misguided country don’t bear thinking of.’

She could not hold back any longer. ‘I entirely disagree. America is led today by men of courage and principle.’

‘Perhaps. Not for long. As soon as their ill-judged systems are in place, the downhill slide into mediocrity and ruin will begin.’

‘Even now they’re planning for their future. It will be founded on example and education.’

‘Which they won’t achieve.’

‘The finest example is already there: in men like Washington, Doctor Franklin.’

He sneered as she named Franklin, but said, ‘Washington serves his country as a war leader and the old man as a diplomat. America will be soon be borne on weaker shoulders.’

‘You grossly underrate what is happening across the Atlantic.’

‘And you, mademoiselle, despite your first-hand experience, see it through rose-tinted glass.’ Then he shrugged and said quietly, ‘I’m afraid all we can do is agree to differ, on this as on everything else.’

For readers keen to know how Viviane fared in this risky confrontation, I’m delighted to say that Rebel will be republished by Sapere Books in 2025-26.

Today, the cynical assessment of the USA that I put years ago into the Baron de Ronseul’s mouth may seem uncannily accurate, but I know that the heart and soul of America defies it. The true spirit of the Republic lives in the citizens of the USA and these despotic times under the self-assumed autocracy of Donald Trump will pass, to reveal that well-founded integrity all over again.