The Ara Pacis
I’m thinking of how to end the Lucius Sestius trilogy at the moment, and I’ve decided to make him one of the sculptures on the Ara Pacis which has always been one of my favourites. I first saw it before it had its facelist and transferral to the lovely museum created for it which you […]
Caesarion
This post is available as a podcast One of the saddest stories I’ve come across in my research for The Third Daughter is that of Caesarion, Cleopatra’s son by Julius Caesar. Born in 47 BCE, and killed in 30 BCE, this young man had no time at all to make a mark on life: there […]
The Cushion Shop
Now that the first draft of The Third Daughter has been – more or less – hammered out, I’m experimenting a little. I look for images from the ancient world which depict everyday activities and use them to improve my descriptions of Junia Tertia’s childhood and upbringing. I am indebted here to websites like the […]
Cleopatra
What a great subject for research! Having decided that I must include a meeting between the protagonist of the new novel and the infamous Queen of the Nile, I am really enjoying this. Cleopatra is so loaded with our preconceptions that peeling away the layers is proving fascinating – and what we really know about […]
The Emperor’s Servant
About a week into September, I remembered that I had booked a line-edit from the marvellous Helen Baggott (http://www.helenbaggott.co.uk/). Cue the end of all the research for the as-yet-formless third novel and a scurry of activity as I realised that I couldn’t send off the already-revised and polished manuscript without ONE LAST READ. Mistake (though […]
The House of Augustus and the two Professors
Augustus’ house on the Palatine Hill, at the heart of Rome, makes a couple of appearances in The Emperor’s Servant so I read T.P.Wiseman’s The House of Augustus the moment I saw that it was published. Now I’m having to go back and rewrite my descriptions of the house, the approach, the Temple of Apollo… […]
Lucius Sestius’ coin
In 43 BC, Lucius Sestius was travelling through Asia with Marcus Junius Brutus the assassin of Julius Caesar. Brutus and his fellow assassin Cassius Longinus were busy raising troops and money for the battle they knew would come: back in Rome, Caesar’s heir Octavian had declared them to be enemies of that state. The young […]
In the sewer
I have started to think about what a reader might like to known about the world in which Lucius lived, material which one can’t necessarily shoe-horn into a novel, and on asking around, the most popular answers were to do with food and waste disposal. Fortunately, there is a magnificent sewer being excavated in Herculaneum […]
The bronze edict of El Bierzo
This bronze tablet discovered “unofficially” around 1999 actually mentions Lucius Sestius Quirinalis, using his full name, as having been a legatus in Spain – that is, governing a province on behalf of Augustus. Interestingly the province is named as Transduriana, which I had never heard of, and to judge by the cautious comments I have […]
