I was inspired to write my first novel, The Spy who Sank the Armada, when I read George Malcolm Thomson’s biography of Sir Francis Drake. “The time had come when Walsingham was no longer satisfied with news that came to him at second-hand, whether from Santa Cruz’s kitchen or from the Governor of Guernsey’s reports of the gossip on Breton ships or in Rouen taverns. He needed an accurate and detailed stream of information about the number of Philip’s ships, their tonnage, the sailors who would man them and the soldiers they would carry. Thanks above all to Standen, he got what he wanted.”

As Standen is a family name I became interested. I read his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the letters concerning him in the archive of the Duke of Tuscany, reports on him by Venetian ambassadors held in the British Library, and Daphne du Maurier’s The Golden Lads, in which Standen is a minor character. The story of Sir Anthony Standen seemed to be the most amazing story I had read, but I kept asking myself, “why did he do that?”, and “how did he do that?”. I then started to write his story myself, sticking as closely as possible to the known facts of his life and the history of the time. It was like a join the dots puzzle. I have since discovered that my 10th great-grandfather, Edmund, was Anthony’s younger brother.

Having got to know Anthony, and thoroughly enjoyed the research, I was compelled to continue writing. I leafed forwards through history looking for events and characters that grabbed my interest. The year 1607 and the characters of Paolo Sarpi and Giordano Bruno caught my attention, and Fire and Earth was conceived. Events in 1610 in Paris have inspired my soon to be published third book in the series, The Suggested Assassin. I have just entered the research phase for book 4, and Frankfurt in 1612 looks interesting. The cogs are beginning to whir.