My new novel ‘Retrovival’ is published today, Monday 16th June 2025, in eBook and Paperback by Elsewhen Press.

 https://elsewhen.press/index.php/catalogue/title/retrovival/

In some ways I’ve been trying to avoid writing this potentially controversial book for about the last five years, in case it might be misunderstood, but in the end it just wouldn’t leave me alone until I followed it through. It features a far-right president of a future independent Scotland, and frankly I was anxious that this character might be seen as a veiled attack on former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, which certainly wasn’t my intention. I am politically on the left and no fan of the Treaty Of Union of 1707 as it has played out within my lifetime. But really my aim was to avoid any narrow contemporary political statements, and instead to use the relationship between Scotland and England to create a larger universal allegory about what gives rise to racism and totalitarianism in our world. My choice of topic now seems almost prescient, since globally these issues have become ever more pressing and worrying every day.

When I began writing Retrovival, current major events in Ukraine and Gaza had not yet kicked off, and politicians such as Georgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen still seemed marginal figures. Maybe the rise of right-wing extremism around the world requires more of an author than simple condemnation. I wanted to understand how imperial nostalgia and jingoism is always rooted in an obsession with the past and an attempt to re-write that past. Also, as a boy growing up in the shadow of the Roman Empire’s Antonine Wall, I have always had a hankering to uncover what went on there, why the wall was abandoned so soon after its completion, and what possible parallels that might have with our present and future. Human nature never changes and history often seems to repeat itself in endless waves of amnesia and folly. They key to our future certainly lies in our past, but only if we understand it correctly and tell the truth about it. Here is the book’s back cover blurb:

“In a world of the future obsessed with the past, the race is on to resurrect a Roman centurion… In the year 2089 England has collapsed into a failed state riven by civil war. In neighbouring Scotland a populist demagogue comes to power on a wave of anti-English sentiment, promising to drive out immigrants who have fled from the south. Globally the endless search for mass entertainment has led to an intense fascination with the archaeological past, manifest in interactive simulations of historical eras, which looks set to take on an unwelcome political dimension under the new Scottish leader Fiona Drest. History lecturer and archaeological consultant Ailee Kenzie is drawn into these events when the body of a Roman soldier is discovered preserved within ancient bog land north of Glasgow. Advanced technology from the Retrovival company can recover fragments of the last experiences held within the dead centurion’s brain. Can Caius Flavius’ memories shed light on Britain’s past and the cultural divides that have uncanny parallels in the volatile present?”

Please get in touch if you wish to review this book, in a magazine, newspaper, blog etc. The book is set both 2000 years into the past and 64 years into the future, thus both Historical fiction and Science Fiction, although it’s true Literary Fiction focus is on the present day. It features an insightful Afterword by Margaret Elphinstone and has received two very kind reviews from her and Mandy Haggith, both very fine historical fiction authors themselves, by whose praise I am astounded and honoured.