‘What Remains’ is a dual timeline Historical Fiction that circles events in Ancient Rome and culminating in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79 and also in Ukraine in the modern day. In the following extract, see how I have embedded research into the revised date of the eruption (see post History Mystery) for more details….

When teaching ‘History’ the first thing I try to instil in my students is an understanding that history is not truth, it is versions and interpretations. What does this mean? The answer is simple. History is what we assume happened until we know better. Where it is well recorded we can know definitive things like…

 Misformed monster or masterful magnate? Emperors of Rome Part 3: Claudius (Part A) Famous for being found hiding behind a curtain and declared accidental emperor by the praetorians, there is much more to Claudius than meets the eye (more than a single post- so there will be three) Born in 10BC, the child of Antonia…

Mad, monster or misunderstood? Emperors of Rome Part 1: Caligula When you think of the Emperors of Rome, and someone mentions madness, does your mind not go straight to the name of Caligula? You have probably heard that he ‘loaned’ out his sisters… or worse. He turned the imperial palace into a ‘house of ill…

CLAUDIUS He tried to sit calmly, scroll in hand, the res geste, words of revered Augustus, written in the Emperor’s own hand. Words which normally soothed him, though today they danced across the page like drunken plebeians at Saturnalia. The two fingers of his right hand tapped out an anxious beat. He willed them to…