Welcome to my website

I was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, of British parents and have lived as long in the Americas as in Britain. I went to school in Cuba, England, Chile and Scotland, then read history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, received a First Class Honours degree then combined teaching with post-graduate research in Chile as a Foreign Area Fellow of the Ford Foundation.

Disillusioned with academia, I joined the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and served in London and Buenos Aires, then became a freelance security consultant and kidnap negotiator, dealing with cases in Italy, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Perú and Chile.

I am a dual UK-USA citizen, speak English and Spanish fluently, have an adequate grasp of Italian and French, and can read Portuguese. I also do my own picture research and have become a skilled cartographer.

Since moving to England in 1999 I have devoted myself to researching and writing about the politics and the cutting edge of conflict, and have collaborated with my old friend Richard Holmes on several titles, notably as Associate Editor of The Oxford Companion to Military History (2000) and as the compiler of the eyewitness testimony in World at War (2007).

My books include Gettysburg (2002), Midway (2002), Crescent and Cross: the Battle of Lepanto 1571 (2003), Rebels & Redcoats: the American Revolutionary War (2003), Razor’s Edge: the Unofficial History of the Falklands War (2006) and Vendetta: High Art and Low Cunning at the Birth of the Renaissance (2008) – see ‘Reviews’ section.

I have been interviewed many times on radio and television and was the guest speaker on a ‘Tsars and Sultans’ themed cruise of the Black Sea. I have made presentations at Cambridge University and at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. I also speak at fund-raising events for the casualties of war.