Roman cops

Thinking about police, gendarmes and emergency services in the past few days brought me to the law enforcers of Ancient Rome. Faced with terrorist attack (or riot, revolt and rebellion), they would have been robust in their attitude and actions. So who policed Rome?

Portable Roman fire engine nozzle, Madrid Museum (Creative Commons)

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Stopped by the forces of law and order

Driving along the main road, I’m happy there are only 11 kilometres to home. I slow down to pass through a village of older cream stone grey-slated houses, interspersed with Roman tile roofed single-storey homes. Halfway through, I reach the open area to the side, not even a proper village square. A blue-uniformed armed figure […]

Amazon is not the only way

Readers buy books from many places; paperbacks from ‘bricks and mortar’ bookshops, airports, souvenir shops at visitor sites, at events, launches, the charity shop, from the author direct as well as online. As for ebooks, there seems no end to the number and variety of e-tailers, the dominant one being Amazon.

Sometimes we forget that […]

Writers' resolutions? Er, no...

No, I’m not making resolutions for 2015; they are easily made and easily broken. It’s a bit like dieting – it never works.

So what’s a writer to do? I have a few recommendations…

Have your vision and write your story – tap, tap, tap. Make a beautiful world or an ugly one – it […]

Women in combat roles?

I don’t want to sound specious, but I could say, ’They’ll be making them bishops next.’ Oh, they just did that.

UK defence secretary, Michael Fallon, announced on 19 December that he wanted to end the army’s ban on women serving in frontline infantry roles in the British Army by 2016. He pointed out that […]