Guest Blog: Mark Butterworth

I love to write historical fiction, and I believe it is critical that the historical element should be as accurate as possible. For my first HF novel, The Pearl River, set in Hong Kong in 1948, and a drama and intrigue book featuring two Spitfire pilots, I used photographs, old RAF papers and newspaper cuttings from the time. I have also visited Hong Kong on several occasions and hope my writing creates the atmosphere and culture of the Far East back in the 1940s.

For my second novel, The Berlin Assignment, I had been to the city some 10 years before writing the book, so took time out to have a long weekend in Berlin, to walk the streets my characters walk, visit museums, take pictures of the city’s main sites. Great resources for creating a realistic tone for the book!

Slightly more exotic perhaps is Readymoney Cove, with a Profumo-esque storyline that links the heady nightlife of London’s West End with the ‘apparent’ sanctuary of Readymoney Cove in Cornwall. 1950s Cold War thriller meets high society.

And staying with Cornwall, my next novel (publication date 28 September 2026) is a Poldark-era character-driven story of a stagecoach travelling to Cornwall in the year 1795. The Truro-Bound Coach and Four follows the relationships, dangers, life challenges and hopes of the passengers spending seven days on a coach from London to Truro. Amazingly, many of the coaching inns of the time still operate as hotels and pubs, making my research, eating, drinking and staying in these lovely establishments such a pleasure! Definitely a sequel to be written about the engaging characters on the coach.

I have also written a modern romance, The Ffryes Affair, set in Antigua in the West Indies. But even this story incorporates a historical backdrop from the days of sugar plantations – I just love to have the influence of history in my books!