CELTICLADY'S REVIEWS: Caesar and Cato, The Road to Empire by Brian Igoe Book Spotlight! @BrianIgoeBooks

This is the first book in The Empire series, books about various unusual Roman Emperors. The second book, Augustus, will be out later this year.

This one is a story, a true story which I always think are the best of stories. A Story of Ancient Rome. An Adventure Story, perhaps?

It is a story of two protagonists, Julius Caesar and Marcus Cato. They represented two opposing philosophies, both dedicated to the same end, the recovery of the health of the Roman Republic which was in their day unwell. Both men were fighters, Caesar on the battlefield where he was arguably the greatest tactician ever and certainly of his times, and plucked many a victory from the jaws of defeat. Cato fought in the Senate. There he opposed Caesar and everything he stood for. It wouldn't have needed much, a different decision by Caesar on crossing the Rubicon for example, to have made Cato pre-eminent in history and Caesar just a byword. This is their story.

The book takes the form of alternating chapters written by each of the two protagonists. ‘Memoirs’, if you like. The action covers a wide geographical range, from North Africa in the south to England in the north, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Greece in the east. A sample chapter, Chapter 1 which is about Cato, can be read on my website, at http://www.caesarcato.org/extract1.html.

The Book ‘cover’ illustration, is of a typical peristyle garden of the period. It is reproduced here with acknowledgements and thanks to the photographer ‘I, Sailko’. It is a Reconstruction of the garden of the House of Vetii in Pompeii, constructed for an exhibition at Boboli Gardens in Florence in 2007

It is typical of that to be found in a domus such as would have been found in Caesar’s or Cato’s home in Rome at the time of this story.

AUTHOR INFO:

Brian Igoe holds an MA in law from Cambridge University in the UK, so he thinks he can write intelligibly. He is very much a family man who has four sons and three granddaughters. Last year he celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary. He never even thought about writing anything more than a diary or a business document until he retired. That momentous event left him with time to write for fun, almost exclusively history, sometimes presented in novel form. He now writes Ancient Roman history covering the late Republic to the early Empire, and has in the past written Irish history (he is Irish) and Southern African, since he lived in Zimbabwe for thirty years - he still thinks of that beautiful country as home even though he now lives in the UK. Apart from history, a passion since his schooldays, his other great passion has been flying light aircraft, which is how he survived the years of the Liberation Struggle, or so he says. That, and computers. He was running an automated dairy herd on a Kaypro “portable” computer in 1983 and has never looked back. That was why he took to eBooks as soon as he came across them, and now everything he writes is written chiefly for eBook publication, although there appears to be a shift in reader emphasis back to printed books, so he also offers Print On Demand versions (more expensive!).

Interview with Brian Igoe

Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?

I sometimes feel I grew up in a car. Or an aeroplane. Earlier I suppose it was in my grandmother's house in Ranelagh Road, Dublin. But as a family we did a lot of traveling, I went to boarding school from the age of 8, and spent holidays in Southern Africa, France, and Ireland, so all in all a happy start to life (apart from school!). Little did I know that half a century later these early travels would provide the canvas upon which I was to work on books...

When did you first start writing?

I did some articles for a South African Economics Magazine around 1985, and later condensed them into a booklet entitled 'High Yield Investment Programmes - Fact or Fiction?'. However in the sense of writing books, I started when I was 65! I started life as a lawyer and became by a series of unexpected twists and turns what I suppose one would call a businessman. First an assistant in a horticulture development in Ireland, then as a manager on a Tea Estate in what was then Rhodesia, and that led to a career which left me as the boss of a multi-national multi-disciplined company based in Harare, by now Zimbabwe. We left Zimbabwe in 2001, and for a few years I was a business consultant and eventually retired. During all that I lived through Zimbabwe's Liberation Struggle and learned to fly, and when I retired I started scribbling memories from which emerged my first 'book', To Fly!

What motivated you to become an indie author?

A Love affair. With a Computer. A thing called a Kaypro from which we ran a 300 cow dairy herd in 1983. The cows were free ranging animals on a huge field on which were parked numbers of feeding stalls. These were linked to the Kaypro in the office, so that when, say, Bessie IV walked in the stall would be instructed by Mr. Kay's Kaypro to feed her until she had eaten her ration for the period. She could not exceed that ration, and at milking time her milk was likewise weighed and recorded by the Kaypro. If it was more than her average the next feed would also be more. That saved the cost of the computer in a week by more efficient rates of conversion of food into milk, and led me to think seriously. I moved onwards and upwards applying computer technology to every aspect of our business where it could make us more profitable. When retirement and 'To Fly' came along, eBooks were becoming seriously popular, and for me being an Indie author was a natural progression. What motivated me to write at all? Boredom, I guess. And the possibility that writing was something which might, just might, turn my passion for history into an income....

What do you write about?

a/. Mainly History and historical themes.
b/. Things I know something about.
I write about the past because that has been a hobby since childhood, and I write about things I know about because I feel that if someone is actually going to pay to read what I have written, it must be what it says it is. My Story of Ireland, for example, is just that, the story of how Ireland got from where she came from to where she is today. Most of the other books are novels to the extent that I have imagined some of the scenes but not the plot. Napper Tandy for example, lived the life and died the death I have described, but what he actually said and the conversations he had along the way I have imagined unless there is a record available. The Road to Zimbabwe on the other hand is imagined within broad parameters for the first six hundred years, but becomes factual, almost autobiographical, in the last third of the book.

What is your writing process?

First, obviously, research. Mostly on the internet which has made quite easy a task which a few decades ago would have taken months and involved a great deal of travel and hours of browsing in various libraries. That research I then condense into notes set within the timeframe of the story. That in turn is expanded into the book. The actual writing process I find needs a disciplined approach, just as though I were still running a business. So I rise at 4:30 a.m., work until 7 a.m., bath shave and breakfast and then work until midday. That's it. In the afternoon we hike, my wife and I, all over the countryside where we live. She says we go walking. I think hiking sounds less geriatric. Take your pick. We aim at 20 miles or so a week. Some books take more time than others, but I aim at two a year and between 70,000 and 100,000 words a book. Then I put the result away for a while, say from six to twelve months, and then I get it out again and edit it. That works for me, and anyhow I can't afford an editor!

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