The Blog

Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii a Day is written as a travel guide. It's Lonely Planet, if Lonly Planet was a couple of millenia old.

I sometimes wonder if Romans looked at their December babies the same way we look at ours: “Aw, poor thing! Sucks for them to be born so...

Juvenalia is coming in November. I don't have a preorder link yet, but I'll be sharing that as soon as I do. Juvenalia is the second book...

For those who came here via my email, can you believe I spelled "salvete" wrong? I'm going to blame autocorrect, who kept trying to...

I have a thing for old books. Love them. Whenever I find a secondhand or antique book shop, I'll check out the medical section first,...

Childhood as we know it is only a recent invention. The French historian Philippe Ariès, in his 1960 book Centuries of Childhood, argued...

If you ever have a look at the amazing Plastico di Roma Imperiale, a plaster model of Rome in the 4th Century, you'll see a bunch of...

Do you know what this is? It’s a Roman dodecahedron. Only a little over a hundred of these have been unearthed. They are made of copper...

What do you do when you’re in a Roman legion and you need a quick energy boost? It’s time to break out the posca! Posca is an Ancient...

One of the most fun things about Ancient History is that it's never as dead as you think it is. I'm in the middle of writing the second...

Happy Saturnalia! I've talked a bit before about recreating Roman recipes, which is admittedly not very easy for me. Mostly because I am...

If I'd been at all mechanically inclined, I would love to be one of those archaologists who builds ancient siege engines and stuff like...

Sub Rosa is out now, and I couldn't be more thrilled! I hope you love these characters just as much as I do, and want to see where life...

Today I had the absolute pleasure of visiting my sister's Year 7 class, and getting to answer a whole bunch of questions about Ancient...

Here's an excerpt from Sub Rosa, in which we join Valerius and Juba as they head into the city and Valerius gets a haircut. I won't lie,...

In super exciting news, Sub Rosa is now available to preorder. It's already up on Amazon, and should be listed at other retailers in the...

Part of the fun about writing historical novels is that you get to use real people. And part of the fun about writing historical novels...

At the centre of every book set in Ancient Rome is the Forum. There are some fantastic YouTube videos out there, like this one, where you...

I've talked a lot before about how on one hand we all know that the past is a different country and one that is incredibly foreign to us...

If you wander the ruins of the forum of Leptis Magna, in modern day Libya, you can see this carved into the footpath: This is the Ancient...