Provocations « Alison Morton's Roma Nova

Surprise and pleasure at a woman leading the action

Not, not me in ‘combat bookseller’ mode! But…

Last weekend, I attended a marché de Noël – Christmas fair – near where I live in southwest France. I chatted with local English friends, met real ones who had only been Facebook friends until then and made new ones. I had a fascinating discussion about […]

Women as heroes?

All fictional characters are, er, fictional. We borrow, mine, or lift characteristics from Real Life, but unless we want to get sued, the finally moulded form is a construct. We can gender mirror (I love using that expression – also made up), we can speculate, we can imagine.

Ditto the setting. Even if your thriller […]

Alternative history isn’t just about Nazis!

The Man in the High Castle (original story by Philip K Dick, 1962) and SS-GB (Len Deighton, 1978) have been the most prominent ‘what if’s on the screen recently. Apart from the terrific production values, these stories gripped our imaginations as the most horrific thing that could have happened to Western Europe/America in the […]