History is usually told through the actions of leaders and armies. Yet most people experience historical change not through power, but through the disruption of ordinary life.
My writing focuses on those quieter perspectives — the lives of individuals navigating events far larger than themselves.
History is often written through the lives of kings, generals and political leaders. Their decisions shape events, but they rarely represent how history was actually experienced. Most people encounter historical change not as grand strategy but as disruption to ordinary life. War, political upheaval, migration and economic change are felt first in homes, farms, streets and workplaces.
My interest as a writer lies in those quieter spaces. I am drawn to the lives of people who would rarely appear in official records: labourers, families, migrants, soldiers or prisoners who find themselves caught in forces much larger than themselves. Their decisions are usually practical rather than heroic. They respond to circumstances rather than shaping them. Yet their experiences are the real texture of history.
This approach shifts the focus away from spectacle and towards consequence. A rebellion is not only a battle; it is also the moment when someone leaves home and may never return. Transportation is not just a policy of empire; it is a family suddenly separated by an ocean. Even major political movements become personal when viewed through the life of an individual trying to survive them.
Writing in this way also allows space for ambiguity. Ordinary people rarely know how events will turn out. They act with incomplete information, rumours and assumptions. In that sense their experience is closer to our own. History only appears inevitable in retrospect.
The aim is not to recreate history from above but to experience it from within. By following individual lives, the scale of historical events becomes clearer, not through explanation but through lived experience.
These themes also inform my current historical novel William, which explores the lives of ordinary people during the upheavals of the eighteenth century.