Been a while since I last posted. Fascinating and informative blogs as ever - hadn't heard of Nolan and his 'involvement' in the charge of the Light Brigade. How tragic though. How easily costly mistakes, misunderstandings can be made.
A Roman cavalry follow up to the 'Boar' trilogy sounds a good next step - perhaps Hadrian's Wall based, unless you are thinking of moving the action across to Gaul and beyond. I applaud your creative muse!

Just got round to reading Tarve and the Afrika Korps. Just excellent. In the days before Border Force presumably....

Interesting blogs, as ever. As an avid reader of the popular Roman novels which often capture the political machinations in Rome and have an elite cohort or two taking up impossible challenges and fighting against the odds, I found the two 'Boar' novels quite refreshing insofar as they deal with the lesser known Antonine Wall and that Allan has a neat way with dialogue and storyline. I enjoyed 'Sword of the Boar' as a sequel to 'Legionaries of the Boar' and hope that we haven't heard the last of Velio and his comrades in arms.

Interesting blog on Hadrian. The new series about Robson Green walking the length of Hadrian's Wall is worth a watch - quite fancy a stroll around Corbridge fort and the village of Wall, built out of stones from the wall. Still on the Hadrian theme, I found a copy of Marguerite Yourcenar's novel 'Memoirs of Hadrian' in a book sale - well worth a read, if you haven't already done so.

On something completely different: I wonder if your site name is hampered by the fact that Loch Ard fiction often throws up other Lord Ard sites when googled. Just a thought.

In response to the news on Blog 15, Allan, the Kindle edition of 'Legionaries of the Boar' is welcome: much more accessible to read and easier to pay for! Looking forward to the next one.

Meant to say 'thankfully' at end of previous post. And , yes, theme music can play an important and integral part of a film, Zulu and Gladiator are two examples. A final observation: while those at Rorke's Drift weren't caught out in open, their fellow soldiers at Isandhlwana were not so lucky; that battle and the actions of a commander dividing his forces has, for me, uncanny parallels with Little Big Horn three years earlier.

I just wanted to add how much I enjoy Allan's regular and interesting blogs. Reading 'The Washing of the Spears' as a teenager seems to have fired his interest in history; it is a superb, compelling account of the Anglo-Zulu war. For those of us of a certain vintage, the Stanley Baker/Michael Caine film, Zulu, is a firm favourite. Yes, the British soldiers had the firepower and the protection of Rourke's Drift, and the Zulus had the sheer weight of numbers, The film portrays the terror that the British soldiers must have felt when seeing the Zulu host approaching, and the respect between the two sides at the end of the battle. In an earlier blog, Allan mentioned the story of William Moody from Edinburgh who ended up in Custer's 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Big Horn. In both instances, the British and US soldiers were greatly outnumbered and one can only imagine the feelings of dread - Colour Sergeant Bourne's words of reassurance to a frightened trooper spring to mind. These two battles were three years apart in 1876 and 1879; thanking for the British they were not caught out in the open. Also, fair play to Allan in explaining some of the thinking behind his stories and ideas for the future.

I enjoyed the short ghost story 'The Custom Officer's Tale' and am sure that old Tarve must have other stories to tell. It gave a pretty realistic account of life on shift at a customs station and the different personalities. I doubt anyone would want to be Tarve on the stricken vessel, that seemed eerie enough, yet I wanted more. Allan has some deft turns of phrase and writes with conviction and knowledge about customs life, in days gone by. It is a skill to tell a story so concisely, but, as stated above, I wanted more!

I enjoyed both The Ghosting of Stan Palfrey and Lothin Strongarm, both of which are nicely told, with an excellent sense of time and place. Lothin Strongarm affords a convincing glimpse of the violent and precarious lives of the inhabitants of Scotland in Viking times. The Ghosting of Stan Palfrey possesses the ambivalence of a classic ghost story, with a spooky Victorian setting and echoes of warfare through the centuries.

I thoroughly enjoyed 'Legionaries of the Boar'. I've lived close to parts of the Antonine Wall all of my life, but for the first time ever it was brought to life by this captivating, well-researched and splendidly written novella! The attention to detail throughout the narrative clearly reflects the level of research undertaken and provides an air of authenticity I haven't seen in a historical novel since Tranter.
If you start this book (and you really should) ensure that you have set sufficient time aside, because you won't want to put it down until the very end!