Items filtered by date: April 2025

What does this image have to do with me as a novelist? Nothing--but I am posting it anyway as an expression of my concern as an historical researcher. This is my only social media outlet at the moment and I find I cannot let the day go by without posting the following, which is a quote from an email I just sent to a close friend. I believe it expresses a deep concern that must surely be shared by millions of other Australians.

'While catching most of the last campaign debate on TV yesterday evening I was horrified to hear Dutton say that the welcome to country was 'overdone' all over Australia and should be reserved for events of national significance, amongst which he did NOT include ANZAC Day!!!! He said it 'cheapened' the ceremony to overdo it. 

'This is a slap in the face all over again to Aboriginal people who served in both the First and Second World Wars and received NO ACKNOWLEDGMENT for their service, let alone citizenship, which they only got in 1947. It is also an insult to First Nations men and women who have served in other wars since, including of course Vietnam. This disgraceful ignorance of Australia's collective history on Dutton's part is all of a piece with his ignorance about the price of eggs.

'Australians are 'doing it tough' indeed if the man who claims to be able to lead them into security and prosperity knows nothing about how and why their forefathers have fought for this country or what it costs to put something on our daily bread in our own day.'

This is how the salon at the Château de Cirey looked in 2007 when I was kindly received there by the Comtesse de Salignac-Fénelon. Not precisely as it would have appeared in 1735 while Émilie du Châtelet was sheltering Voltaire at her home in this remote corner of the Champagne—but its grandeur alone would have enough to intimidate a lower-class gendarme, if he were ordered to investigate a crime on her premises …

Cavalier Constant, mounted policeman, had to do just that in Murder at Cirey, my first novel in the new series that Sapere Books are launching this year. Here is their announcement, accompanied by two more images to introduce the character whom some readers have dubbed ‘the Jack Reacher of the eighteenth century’. Thank you, Sapere Books.