A Walk in "Wild" Wales with George Borrow

In his Welsh classic, Borrow provides an account of his walk from Llangollen to Swansea in 1856, a walk which at the time would have been a pursuit of epic proportions. Borrow’s literary musings, historical anecdotes and experiences along the way, presented in the form of a journal, provide an insight to Welsh life as it was in the middle of the 19th Century.

In a world immersed in the industrial revolution, Borrow was undoubtedly struck by the magnitude and pace of change that was happening around him. But it would not have been evident to him that the world could be anything like it is today. A world without motor cars, no electricity, no telephones, no aeroplanes, no police force anything like we know it today and the wonders of a technological revolution that has turned the world on its head not even a figment of the imagination, that was the world of Borrow.

A Walk in “Wild” Wales with George Borrow compares Borrow’s Wales with Wales today and captures events that have impacted on towns that Borrow passed through and some of the characters they have produced who have helped shape a Welsh culture built on a unique language and a hardiness of spirit descendant from its farming and mining heritage.  

A Time in Paris

In the sweltering Indian summer of 1870, a young Englishman is sent to Paris as Prussian invaders advance on the French capital with the largest siege army ever assembled. The City of Light is cut off from the outside world, the population trapped behind its tall ramparts. As the siege continues for a month, then a second, a hungering third, a frozen fourth and into a starved fifth, the Englishman, a stock young gentleman of his Victorian times, falls in love with a radical French enchantress who by chance saves his hide. The lovers’ fate is entwined with those of a tormented French general appointed to defend Paris and an impatient Prussian grandee (Otto von Bismarck) hell-bent on bringing the ‘capital of civilisation’ to its knees. The unlikely love story turns upon true events that have shaken our world through to the present.

Praise for David Lawday’s recent book Danton: Giant of the French Revolution:

“Spirited and highly readable… Lawday creates some great set pieces and striking turning points… He is able to capture the atmosphere of the early revolution: its inflammable mix of devilment and righteousness, reckless selflessness and flagrant self-promotion. He sees that Danton was more than the sum of his crimes, the sum of his secrets; he celebrates his ‘large heart and violent impulses in an irresolvable conflict’.”

Hilary Mantel, The London Review of Books.

A Senseless Death in a Dying Republic

A young man, Justinian, is setting out to join the Roman army during a period of bitter tensions during the last years of the Roman republic. His enlistment gets off to a bad start when he loses contact with his fellow soldiers while on a march. A chance meeting with a young woman sets off a series of events which lead to criminal charges of desertion and malicious killing.

Set during the turbulent times of the Marian and Sulla civil war, A Senseless Death in a Dying Republic is a gripping story of lost dreams and a disregard for human life. The novel features historical characters such as Sulla, Marius, Pompey, Cicero and Catalina.

A Raven's Calling

This story begins in the small village of Louisbourg, Nova-Scotia and finds its way to the village of Perce, Quebec, where Celine brings the truth to light.

We have a man, Tomas, found dead, washed up on a lonely beach and a woman, Celine, who comes from afar to begin a new life miles away in the historical village of Louisbourg. What do these two lives have in common? When Celine leaves her life of over fifty years in Ontario, to start a new chapter for herself she finds the truth about Tomas and how and why he was found, dead, on a beach many miles away from Louisbourg where he worked as a night watchman at the fortress of Louisbourg. Celine, his replacement, finishes what Tomas had begun until his mysterious death. Now the truth is in the hands of two countries. What will come from this new truth? Will history be rewritten? Was a life given up for love or truth?

A Mind Behind

Embark on an extraordinary journey alongside Laura as she ventures from the shores of England to the vibrant landscapes of Italy.

Set against the backdrop of Italy’s struggle for independence, A Mind Behind unravels the compelling story of one woman’s courageous odyssey.

A Life of Breath

Jamie is a respiratory doctor working on the front line. After 12 months without catching the illness himself, he finally gets infected from an unlikely source.

He struggles to come to terms with his own first experiences of the breathlessness that has been the focus of his working life. He also has to reflect on his own potential mortality. Neither are a comfortable ride.

He has had a hugely successful 35-year career, which has taken him to the very top of his specialist field. At the same time, we meet the shy, gauche, and naïve first year doctor, who could never imagine, the achievements ahead. We read the disastrous, humorous, and unbelievable escapades, which mould his career, whilst realising that a successful personal life does not necessarily match, that of the career

The author believes the public has fallen out of love with their medical professionals and in writing this part biography, part fictional account of one doctor’s story, he hopes to put this right. You should laugh, cry and cringe in approximately equal doses, but you might not be able to look your own doctor squarely in the eye, with quite the same perspective, again.

A Ha’penny Will Do

Love, dreams and destitution.

Three members of one family are linked by their struggle to survive poverty and war at the turn of the century.

Kate, a homesick, lonely Irish immigrant, dreams of being a writer. After difficult times in Liverpool, she comes to London looking for a better life. Hoping to escape from a life of domestic service into marriage and motherhood, she meets charming rogue, William Duffield. Despite her worries about his uncertain temperament, she becomes involved with him. Will it be an escape or a prison?

Fred is a restless elder son, devoted to his mother yet locked in a tempestuous relationship with his father. War intervenes and he secretly signs up to serve abroad. Is his bad reputation deserved? What will become of him?

Joe, too young to sign up for WW1, is left to endure the hardships of war on the home front and deal with his own guilt at not being able to serve. He starts an innocent friendship with his sister-in-law which sustains him through hard times. Will he survive the bombs, the riots, the rationing and find true love in the end?

These are their intertwined and interlocking stories told through the medium of diaries, letters and personal recollections, based on the author’s family history covering the period of 1879–1920. The truth is never plain and rarely simple.

A Frame of Mind

In a world where all is not as it appears to be, it is time to take off the blinkers and embark upon a cerebral journey through fractured minds and augmented realities in a tale of suburban survival. Chronicling more than fifty years of history, fates collide, presentiments are realised and prophesies foretold in a gripping and intense narrative revealing the interdependencies which are often hidden within the roots of the human condition.

A Fine Line

A story of the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.

Set between Victorian Liverpool and Dundee and the battlefields of the First World War, three families face the perils of life on the economic cliff-edge, where a single misstep can send lives plunging out of control.

Crossing a century of dramatic change, their journey begins in the aftermath of the slave trade, moving through the era of Empire expansion and Industrial Revolution to a time of religious strife and global conflict.

The world they navigate is one fraught with hazard in which exploitation, zealotry and violence lead to rape, prostitution, fraud, and murder.

At its heart, two indomitable women – lifelong friends – choose very different paths as they strive to hold their worlds together, and to survive.

500 Days

How different could the world have been, then and now, if lead-ups and events surrounding the Second World War had occurred vastly differently? What if different alliances had been formed through dramatic circumstances and, subsequently, the tyrants had been unable to wield their evil powers?

In the latter half of the 1930s, Russia and Germany are going through the motions of getting on well with each other until a series of “events” occur. A spectacular explosion kills many fascists including Hitler and the Russians decide to seize the moment and invade. Britain and France declare war on Russia and become allied to a Germany under new leadership. There are more shocks when Stalin disappears just when the Russians seem on the brink of success.

Germany, however, has a great deal of support and there are great sea powers, especially Britain, who begin to demonstrate their vast reach. One of the smallest navies in existence also has a big say in subduing a mighty power.