Ian Mortimer


 

What was New in 2016?

19 December 2016
Two videos

My son Alexander has produced a showreel of the performances of 'The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval Music' that took place in July this year, using an audio recording from the Moretonhampstead event and stills and footage from that one and the other two. You can see it on this Youtube page. Also, the short speech I gave at Ric Horner's private view in October is now on Youtube too.


13 December 2016
Cover for The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain

Here it is:


4 December 2016
Covers and copyediting

I think we're almost there with covers for both The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain and The Outcasts of Time. In both cases some good ideas needed refinement and I am very grateful to both publishers for taking the trouble to consider my points and devote some more designer time to the matter. Getting the cover right is so important, and it is so difficult. The author knows his audience better than anyone - yet he is not a designer. The designers know their craft better than anyone - yet they are not the ones who understand the mechanics of selling. The publishers are caught in the crossfire, trapped between the author's vision, the readers' expectations, the potential readers' curiosity, the designer's skill, the other books in the bookshop and the integrity of the work itself. There is a serious danger that the consensus will be something that aims to please everyone - and we all know what happens then: it pleases no one. It lacks originality. So I'm happy with how things have developed. As soon as they are finalised, I will put the covers here.

The copyeditor's job on The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain is now done. All my talks for the year are likewise done (a mighty mixed bag of them this year). Now I have to check the proofs, write the captions for the illustrations, write an article or two promoting it, deal with the copyeditor's queries on The Outcasts of Time and the check the proofs for that book, and then I can start work on The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain.

I've been thinking also about this term 'cultural appropriation' that is being bandied about a fair bit. People don't seem to have thought through the implications. So I wrote a note on the dangers of getting too hung up on the negatives of inter-cultural borrowing.


27 November 2016
Injury time

I've been struggling with a hip injury for the last five months. At first it wasn't an 'injury' as such but rather a niggling pain. I continued to run on it and it continued to get worse. On 30 August I ran the third half marathon of the month - and never properly recovered. And still I continued to run, stupid me. On days when I didn't run, I'd walk at least five miles at a very brisk pace, mostly up and down steep hills. Now it seems that I have been suffering from a stress fracture in my hip all that time, constantly stopping it from healing and risking long-term damage. None of the three osteopaths I spoke to recognised the problem - admittedly only one actually examined me properly - and thus none of them said I should stop long distance walking as well as running. Now I see that continuing to run on this injury could worsen it to the point where it turns into a real fracture and causes severe problems. My advice to anyone else who runs: if you don't know what's causing the pain in your hip, even if it's not too bad, stop all weight-bearing exercise in case it is a stress fracture.

As a result, I stood at the finish and watched the parkrun at Exeter Riverside yesterday. And it was so impressive to see Phil Wylie in action - what a runner, deserving of the description 'poetry in motion'. Despite the course being muddy, he came home in 15:18 - only twelve seconds outside his PB - and almost a minute and a half ahead of the second-placed runner. That's almost four and a half minutes faster than my own best effort, and my best time was set in summer, when conditions were better. It was great to put a face to all the names that I see on the results page but don't see during the race (because they are WAY out in front of me). I'm going to be a volunteer next weekend, at the Parke parkrun.

The third draft of The Outcasts of Time - a novel to be published in the UK by Simon and Schuster on 15 June 2017 - has been revised and sent to my editor, and will go to the copyeditor before Christmas. In the meantime I am halfway through dealing with copyeditor's queries on The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain. I've selected the images for the plate sections now too. Very pleased with both books. I'm going to launch The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain at an event held at Devon Heritage Centre by the Friends of Devon's Archives (of which I am currently the chairman) on 3 April 2017.


12 November 2016
Nearly there...

We're nearly there with finalising the text of the third Time Traveller's Guide, which is to Restoration Britain. My editor and I have been sending files back and forth, trying to cut it to a length that will allow it to be priced at £20 and not £25. The way it goes is generally like this: he suggests a paragraph be cut, and I refuse but respond by trimming the said section. We've lopped off a few playwrights and eradicated a few sports, and some sections on the emotions have had to go, but I saved Thomas Tompion and Henry Purcell from the bin, and a section on the atrocious weather. The process of enclosure has been reduced, some diseases have been eradicated from that chapter, and some legal cases have been axed. I'm hoping to keep a short section on playing football in Latin, and have rewritten the envoi about fifteen times. Between us we've shaved 25,000 words off the first draft of 196,900 words, which means we might be able to keep the price low. Next job is to finalise the illustrations.

There's a section on mirrors and individuality from the fifteenth-century chapter of my book, Millennium available on the Lapham's Quarterly website. The book has just appeared in the USA, published by Pegasus Books. (In the UK the paperback edition of this book is called Human Race; in hardback it was Centuries of Change, so if you've bought either of those, you've already got it.)

 


24 September 2016
Year ahead, years behind

It was my birthday on Thursday (49), so I was pleased to run a personal best this morning at the infamous Parke parkrun (5k), despite feeling very creaky in my right hip. Actually, I'm only fooling myself - anyone can run a PB when the course is dry and you don't have to haul yourself through a quagmire after climbing a cliff and jogging through a jungle. In fact, come to think of it, if I had not managed to set a new PB, I'd have been going nowhere fast. But to do so despite a pain was satisfying.

The process of turning another year, however, makes me look ahead to my personal jubilee. And that makes me think of the books to come. I am excited by my new novel, The Outcasts of Time, which will appear in the UK on 15 June 2017. It breaks away from genre historical fiction in the same way my Time Traveller's Guides broke away from genre social history. Talking of TTGs, the new Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain will be published in the UK on 6 April 2017 and two days earlier in the USA. I see that the Pegasus cover for the USA edition of my study of change, which in the UK was called Centuries of Change in hardback and Human Race here in paperback, is now online, under the title Millenium. The UK cover for TTGRB is still on the drawing board but as soon as I have a copy, I'm going to have it printed on the back of a running shirt with 'Published 6 April 2017' and then start at the back of each race and see how many people I can overtake. That'll give me an incentive to go as fast as possible.

 


10 September 2016
Dartmoor: Theatre of Light

Last night was the private view of the exhibition 'Dartmoor: Theatre of Light' by my great friend, the landscape painter Ric Horner. I sponsored the exhibition and did a talk about Ric and his place in the history of landscape painting at the show. And I bought a painting, 'Laughter Tor', which the next day appeared featured in a double-page spread in The Western Morning News. Funnily enough the text that appeared alongside it was from the press-release, which I had written for the gallery. I think that brings the number of Ric's paintings in my collection to twenty-two. He really is an outstanding landscape painter, giving the act of seeing a landscape an emotional impact that harks back to the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century 'sublime' and has a metaphorical resonance that is reminiscent of great nineteenth-century landscape painting. And yet it is utterly modern, firmly resisting the urban, technological and over-populated world. Eradicating people and man-made objects from the views and reaching for the eternal and timeless elements of our place on Earth, whether at sea or on land, even though they may be quite disturbing (pathless woods, dark lanes leading who knows where, seas that seek to consume us utterly) puts his painting on a level above that of any other landscape painter that I know working today. His ability to paint the light, and give it a quality that is far more sensational than merely depicting the landscape itself, is quite astonishing. It's not just that you can 'walk into' one of his paintings; it's that you can look up at the vast sky once you have done so, and reflect on what it is to be alive. I'm publishing the catalogue through Cross Tree Press.

 
 
 

31 August 2016
Trip to France

It was meant to be a holiday but such is a writer's life that holidays have to be suspended when deadlines loom. In my case the deadline had loomed, and passed, been discussed with the publishers, revised to a later date, loomed again, passed again, been discussed again, revised once more, and now loomed a third time. By this stage it was thoroughly depressed with the lack of respect. So it had turned and started to bite. My 'holiday' in the south of France thus saw me rise each morning at 7am and either go for a long run or work through to the afternoon while my family relaxed by the pool and drank chilled demi-sec in 34-degree heat. Was I jealous? You bet. The reason for the long run was partly so I could justify jumping in the pool too, if only to cool off.

Despite the chronic tiredness - I was trying to keep up with Team GB's fantastic performance at the Olympics, which went on half the night - I made progress and could justify the odd trip. I went to Carcassonne twice, and on one of those trips I ran into my good friend the historical novelist Michael Jecks and his family - just as we ran into each other in Poitiers two years ago. One of my fifteen-mile runs took me to Les Chateaux de Lastours - four castles on top of a steep hill. Absolutely stunning, so I had to drag the family back there the next day. But by far the highlight of the whole holiday was to visit Peyrepertuse for the first time. A twelfth- and thirteenth-century castle built 2,500ft up in the Pyrenees. My youngest son (Oliver, 13) declared at the top, 'This is the best view in the world'. It was a damn fine view, he wasn't wrong.

 
 
 

20-22 July 2016
The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval Music

Three concerts in three days, three fantastic experiences. The idea came from two directions. Emily Askew, the extraordinary multi-instrumentalist early music and folk music performer suggested we should work together, putting medieval history and medieval music into a programme. I had already been working along similar lines, using folk music to illustrate aspects of the past with some singers near where I live. It seemed to me that music is a way of hearing the actual expression of people living in the distant past - the notes still evoke their feeling. So I wrote a two-hour-long programme of thirteen short speeches and selected fifteen pieces of related medieval music that illustrate the pre-1500 period, and Emily, her sister Hazel Askew, the lutenist Richard Mackenzie and the percusssionist Louise Duggan joined me at my house in Devon to rehearse. Our first concert was in Moretonhampstead Parish Church (built 1418-50), our second in the tiny fifteenth-century Church House in South Tawton, and the third in the ruined choir of Glastonbury Abbey. It all went very well indeed - wonderfully so. And I can't recall seeing or hearing anything quite like it, for this was not about the music but about medieval life, and the music was the evidence we were using to illustrate aspects of medieval experience. It was enormously gratifying to see the vision become reality and surpass expectations. The audiences were very appreciative too.

What shall we do with the idea now? We are still considering that. My son recorded the whole of the first concert and filmed part of the second, and I filmed a snatch of the third. Some photos were taken too. So we will produce a short publicity showreel shortly. I'd like to put sections of the second concert on the web too, as that event was quite intimate and very special. But I think the real potential lies in other developments, such as an audiobook, not simply doing the same concert all over again. We will see.

Photographs from the South Tawton Church House concert (tiny venue, maximum seating 55, hence the crampedness) are below.

 
 
 

15 July 2016
The History of the Self

The most challenging keynote speech I have yet been asked to give was delivered yesterday. It was at the bi-annual Symposium on the Self and Identity, held at the University of Southampton, Department of Psychology, and my subject was 'The History of the Self, 1000-1600'. I've gained a lot from thinking about this subject, for it really tests the limits of what we can say about people in the Middle Ages. Some would say that the difficulty of understanding how medieval people thought is so great that there really is no point in trying. Yet this area of study reveals so many things that we take for granted about people in later centuries, including ourselves, that I have to disagree. I'll put the text up as a kindle direct publication on amazon in due course.

Now preparing for The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval Music on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday next week, rewriting my novel, The Outcasts of Time, for Simon & Schuster, and finishing The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain for the Bodley Head.


26 June 2016
Torbay Half-Marathon

I completed my first half-marathon today, a semi-hilly 13.11 miles from Paignton to Torquay and back, twice. I came 252nd out of 1600+ finishers, in a time of 1:41:17. Full results are here. Quite pleased with that, considering I only started running last year (at the age of 47) and have only done the full distance twice before. I would like to get under 1:40:00 though. I am almost looking forward to the Great West Run in Exeter in October.


19 June 2016
Michael Alec Rose's Il Ritorno

In June last year I was asked in my capacity as a Member of Dartmoor National Park Authority to attend a meeting with the American composer Michael Alec Rose. He had written a piece of music for solo violin called 'Il Ritorno' in celebration of his many years visiting Dartmoor, and he wanted the premiere to take place somewhere within the National Park. Knowing how good the acoustics are at the parish church over the road, I suggested Moretonhampstead. Michael brought along the violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved in January for a exploration of the place and that went very well. In fact it went amazingly well. Peter is virtuoso and such a good communicator. I asked lots of questions about performances of the past (which Peter answered, often playing tricky passages from the music from memory) and about the violin. The instrument he was playing was made in Cremona in 1629 by Girolamo Amati, the son of the man who invented the modern violin and the father of the chap who taught Stradivari how to make them. It has pedigree.

Last night the premiere took place. I had supported the event by producing and paying for the programme, with proceeds from its sale to go to the church and to Greenhill Arts. So I it was suggested that I should introduce the concert and say a few words at the end. At the start my words were full of excitement that such an event should come to Moretonhampstead, and that Michael Alec Rose should have so embraced Dartmoor and its sense of place from such a long distance (he lives in Nashville) for so many years, and, what's more, written music about it. There are many paintings inspired by Dartmoor; there is a fair amount of poetry; there are quite a few novels (although not many good ones) and a huge amount of photography; but most of the music inspired by the moor and/or created around here is guitar-based rock or folk music. It owes little to the natural envrionment and shows much more influence from the social one. However, in 'Il Ritorno' we have a piece that reflects the tors and water, the sky, the air and the silence.

Peter played several short virtuoso pieces by Biagio Marini, Heinrich Biber, Sadie Harrsison, Pietro Locatelli and Georg Phillipp Telemann to introduce the evening, and talked about the violin. It was spellbinding. His Teleman piece (B minor fantasy, from 1735) was astounding. He was able to create such drama from the instrument that the mind was just inspired to travel high above the Earth and think of things from all time and creation as if one was an ancient Greek God looking down from Mount Olympus, gazing on this thing of interest or that thing of beauty.

And then the main performance commenced, the six movements of 'Il Ritorno'. No one in that church could have failed to realise that this was a very special performance. I don't suppose that a great number of people present regularly listen to much contemporary classical music. I know many of them do not. But we were all aware that everybody was transfixed, partaking of a solemn musical communion. Peter was aware of the intense listening and able to respond. I was moved to tears. Many others were too. At the end, when I stood up to thank the composer and performer, I was almost lost for words. I needed no pre-written notes and to use any would have been trite. It was one of those occasions when you just have to respond to the experience that everyone has just shared and give voice to your appreciation.

A simply fantastic evening, and I am so proud to have been able to play a small part in bringing a piece of Dartmoor inspiration 'home' as it were.

Later note. As a result of the success of the evening, Peter returned to Moretonhampstead church a month later to make a recording of 'Il Ritorno'. This is now available to hear on his website.


15 June 2016
The Referendum on the UK in Europe

I am appalled at the low quality of the debate about the UK in Europe. Anything Brexit does not like, it slams as 'scaremongering' - even if there may be a good reason to be scared. I was amazed to hear a Labour MP say the best reason for voting to remain in the EU was that it was exactly what Nigel Farage didn't want, so had to be a good thing. Stupid. This debate is not about personalities, it is not about loyalty to a cause. But what is it about? Many things, all wrapped up in one vote. I reckon the best way for people to approach this question is for them to lay aside loyalty to a cause or a party and to think out their priorities for themselves, and then assess what is likely to happen in relation to those priorities in the event of a decision to remain or leave the EU. Here is my conclusion.


17 May 2016
Announcing 'The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval Music'

I am very pleased to be able to announce a new collaboration with London-based ensemble The Artisans (including the brilliant sisters Emily and Hazel Askew), with guests Louise Duggan (percussion), and Richard Mackenzie (lute). Medieval music and the history of medieval life rolled into one. I'll be doing the history; the Artisans and their guests will be playing the music.

There will be three performances in July 2016: two in Devon on 20 and 21 July, and one on 22 July at Glastonbury Abbey, in Somerset:

Details of the Devon events, 20 and 21 July
Details of the Glastonbury Abbey event on 22 July.

14 May 2016
Defending 'The Dark Ages'

My comments on discontinuing the use of the term 'Dark Ages' are on the 'History Matters' section of the History Today website. I appreciate why some people think the term awkward but actually it is a useful one for describing the phenomenon we see in history when a society collapses and not only turns violently on itself but also destroys the evidence of its own violent collapse. I can't think of a better term to describe England in the period c. 410-c. 650.


22 April 2016
The annual Shakespeare Lecture in Exeter Cathedral

I attended last night's Shakespeare lecture in Exeter Cathedral chapter house, delivered by Philip Schwyzer of Exeter University. And I was blown away. Often you look along the shelves of Shakespeare scholarship in a university library and wonder 'can anyone have anything more to say?' And then Prof. Schwyzer comes up with something so obvious, so powerful and captivating that you just hang on every word.

His starting point was the poem on Shakespeare's grave in Stratford ('Good Friend, for Jesus' sake forebear / to dig the dust enclosed here. / Blessed be the man that spares these stones / and cursed be he that moves my bones'). It is always dismissed by Shakespeare scholars as being conventional and unremarkable. Heavens, no! As Prof. Schwyzer pointed out, how many other anonymous graves threaten to curse the person who disturbs them? And a curse? In a church? The combination of the anonymity and the curse have a combined power that reminds you of..., well, Shakespeare put it best himself in his Sonnet no. 55 'Not marble nor the gilded monuments / of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.' But that raises the question of what Shakespeare'a attitude to death was - and when you ask that question, you develop a whole new view of the man, seemingly surrounded by mortal remains and shocked by the display and humiliation of the decomposing human form. As Prof. Schwyzer said, there is no better image to convey Shakespeare than Hamlet considering the skull of Yorick, a man he knew, and staring at the mouth where once he saw a smile. I was reminded of Jean Genet's last work, What remained of a Rembrandt, which is an account of an apocalyptic vision in a railway carriage in which the writer sees that every man is worth no more and no less than any other, and realises too that everything he loves and believes in ('everything that stems from seduction') is threatened by the truth of this. That true horror of the annihilation of the person is set alongside Genet's examination of Rembrandt's paintings: the ox carcass hanging in the abbattoir, its meat gleaming viscerally; or the face of the artist himself inspecting his own ageing. I was struck with the impression that Shakespeare had undertaken just this same sort of examination of life annihilated by post-mortem anonymity, and been appalled by it, and yet found the truth of it overwhelming, just like Genet. And like Rembrandt, he could not avoid the truth before his eyes, however inhuman it was. Prof. Schwyzer then summoned up other scenes in which Shakespeare's relationship with the body after death was described: I was particularly struck by the repeated fascination with dead bodies underwater. Why would anyone be concerned about this unless they had seen someone buried at sea? We have no evidence that Shakespeare ever went abroad but it struck me as very likely he had, and had seen someone disappear into that vast anonymity beneath the waves. I think that a man as proud of his position as Shakespeare, and as conscious of his station (as witnessed by the coat of arms, the purchase of New Place, the purchase of a portion of the lay rectory of Stratford), would have found such a confrontation with the obliteration of an individual character - especially his own brilliant one - deeply disturbing. Look into Rembrandt's eyes over the course of a lifetime of portraits and you see that same growing unease, from the brilliant young man so sure of himself to the awareness that his flesh is no more everlasting or distinguished than that of the flayed ox carcass. I would not be surprised if in those lost years after Hamnet was born (1587-90) Shakespeare made a journey abroad, perhaps as part of a young nobleman's retinue visiting Paris or Italy, and saw the body of a man he had known, whom he had seen smile, dropped down into the depths, full fathom five.

So many thoughts arising, so much excitement... That's the mark of a brilliant lecture. I was so enthused I emailed him to ask for more information. He has directed me to a new article on this subject freely available at The Conversation. For his original research, see chapter four of Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature (OUP, 2007).


21 April 2016
The Great West Run

I have entered myself for the Great West Run, a half marathon in Exeter, to be held on 16 October. It's not the sort of thing I usually do - I have never run more than seven miles before, so it's daunting - but it seems like an experience that everyone should have at least once in their lifetime. I thought the same thing about being in a pantomime a couple of years back, and that was great fun. Hard work but very rewarding. I don't have a bucket list; I take the 'once in a lifetime' idea from school (Eastbourne College, in Sussex) where there was something called 'Circus' on a Saturday morning. A master would take a group of boys and girls out to do something they had never done before or a place they had never seen before, or a remarkable person would be invited to lecture us. I remember digging a grave in a local parish church, being told about suicide while up on Beachy Head, and going to see a ballet for the first time. I recall Alexander McKee coming to lecture us about 'how he found the Mary Rose', and Colonel James Irwin telling us what it was like to go to the Moon, and an opera coach making the choir (including me) sing passages from Mozart in contorted positions on stage (to show us what opera was really like), and a healthy-living enthusiast aged seventy who gave his lecture without any notes and then at the end, without any run-up or preparation, did a backward somersault on the spot. The idea that these one-off experiences and messages are an important part of one's education is a good one, and lifelong education should embrace such things as much as youthful preparation for life. So, a half marathon. Wish me luck.


14 April 2016
New Ebooks

I have made two more of my keynote speeches available as ebooks - The Reputation and Legacy of Henry IV and The Meaning of War - to add to The Shakespeare Authorship Doubt and Historical Responsibility and William Tyndale: the only writer in English history more influential than Shakespeare. I have also produced a composite volume, entitled Four Keynote Speeches in which all four are available for the price of one and a half.

The keynote speech that I gave at the Medieval Canterbury conference on 1 April, entitled 'Medieval Horizons', will also eventually join this series. I did write a 15,000-word text (which I delivered from memory on the day) but such was the reaction and the potential that I am planning to rewrite and extend it, and will publish it as a much longer, more substantial piece, probably in book form as well as in ebook.

I have also produced a composite volume of fourteen pieces about writing history for the general public and the challenges of writing 'accurate' and 'authentic' historical fiction. It is called What isn't History? and it is built around my article of that name, first published in 2008. A full list of the contents is as follows:

  1. Originality in history (first published in the Times Literary Supplement);
  2. The Paris catacombs (previously unpublished);
  3. What isn't history? (first published in History: the Journal of the HIstorical Association);
  4. The historian as virtual time traveller (first published in History Today);
  5. History in education (previously unpublished);
  6. Breaking the evidence barrier (first published in History Today);
  7. Wikipedia and the ship of fools (previously unpublished);
  8. The art of history (first published in Historically Speaking);
  9. Historical novelists should not be afraid of telling lies (first published in BBC History Magazine);
  10. Why historians should write fiction (first published in Past and Future: the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research);
  11. Creative non-fiction (a speech given to the Friends of the National Archives);
  12. Twelve hints for writing history for the public (notes for a speech given at Nottingham University);
  13. The importance of archives (first published on the National Archives blog);
  14. The problems of visiting the past in fact and fiction (a speech given to the Historical Novel Society);

19 January 2016
Literary festivals not paying writers

I see that Philip Pullman's resignation from the Oxford Literary Festival on the grounds that they do not pay writers has caused a reaction in the press. And a good thing too: I applaud him. Amanda Craig has revealed the discontent some of us feel with an open letter to The Bookseller. 'For too long, authors have been persuaded to give our services to the public for free - even though the public is paying in good faith to see us," she wrote. "We are the only people in festivals who are not paid, and yet without us the festivals could not exist.' There's an opinion piece by Claire Armitstead in The Guardian too, in which she cautions against a too-enthusiastic endorsement of the view that authors should be paid. It's a good contribution to the debate - although I suspect she'd feel differently if The Guardian did not pay her for her journalism. It's all very well for her to tell us we should give up our time for free.

Anyway, I thought I would draw attention to my own piece on the subject, Literary festivals and the author, from 8 July 2013. This was just after Ways with Words at Dartington had refused to let me have a writer's ticket to attend events, despite me having given up the time and travel expenses to deliver six free talks for them over the years. Ways with Words is a profit-making business, so there is no excuse for not paying authors. Most people, when they pay to hear a writer speak, expect at least some of the cash to go to him or her. My agent at the time discouraged me from publishing the piece but, really, I should have done. Literary festivals that do not pay writers should feel ashamed, and should be boycotted - by the public as well as the writers. And as this piece makes clear, they don't have much of a long-term future if they don't.


19 January 2016
Ghost Gleams

Chances are you've never heard of the above-mentioned book, by W. J. Wintle. It was published in 1921 by Heath Cranton, is very rare, and is the earliest volume of ghost stories aimed at young people. It is thus highly collectable. But when an enthusiast came to my house, I learned something about my copy that was very exciting. Therefore I wrote a note about it.


4 January 2016
Forthcoming books

To kick off the New Year, here's some news about future books.

  • The USA edition of Human Race: 10 Centuries of Change on Earth will be published by Pegasus Books under the title: Millenium: from religion to revolution, how life has changed over a thousand years. It is scheduled to appear in bookshops in November 2016. Pegasus will also publish my current work-in-progress, The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain, which will appear in the UK in April or May 2017, courtesy of The Bodley Head.
  • My next novel will be published under my own name, Ian Mortimer (not my middle names, James Forrester, which I used for the Clarenceux trilogy). The book is called The Outcasts of Time and is about two medieval characters, a pious stonemason and his lecherous brother, a wool merchant, who try to sell their souls to the Devil in order to avoid dying of plague in 1348. It will be published on 18 May 2017 by Simon & Schuster.


     
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