Hwæt! That’s how Anglo-Saxon scops (Saxon poets) summoned the warriors, drinking and feasting in the king’s mead hall, to listen to the tale they were about to sing. It was how JRR Tolkien began his lectures on Beowulf to Oxford undergraduates a millennium and a half later. And it was how I, the child of Sri Lankan and Italian immigrants, ended up writing about 7th-century Northumbria over the last decade and a half.
I am the author of over 12 books, mostly with Catholic historical themes. Being a Catholic writer with a fascination with the Dark Ages hasn’t been the easiest of literary voc-ations. We live in a very different publishing world from when editors welcomed novels and biographies by Catholic writers such as Evelyn Waugh (his biography of Edmund Campion is still in print), Ronnie Knox and GK Chesterton. Most Catholic magazines have ignored my work for years.
