The Blog
Medieval history · Crusades · Templars · Ancient Greece
Historical essays on the great themes of my novels.
Why were the Eight Crusades inevitable?
From Peter the Hermit to the fall of Acre: why each crusade called for the next.
Mathurin de Romegas and his capuchin monkey: the luckiest pirate of the Mediterranean
Malta, 1554. A French captain survives beneath the flooded hull of his capsized galley, breathing the last bubble of air with his capuchin monkey. Ten years later, a single act of piracy triggered the Great Siege of Malta of 1565.
Spakó: the shepherdess who saved Cyrus the Great of Persia
Year 599 BC. An illiterate shepherdess whose name meant «She-Wolf» saved the future founder of the Persian Empire with a brilliant idea. The story behind the legend of the wolf that suckled Cyrus the Great.
The bear that nearly killed Godfrey of Bouillon
Konya, July 1097. On the road to the Holy Land, Duke Godfrey of Bouillon faces an enraged bear alone in the middle of the night. A scar that would mark him forever and an episode that almost changed the course of the First Crusade.