Profile: David Bradley

About This Author

As a dental surgeon for 33 years, I was privileged to view human kind from close quarters - an ever-surprising, sometimes amusing, occasionally bizarre, but always encouraging experience. Now retired from clinical practice, I have the opportunity to explore my other great passion - history: its stories, people, variety and enigmas. I write fiction set in the past (cf. historical fiction), based very closely on such records as exist but interpreted anew. I don't see our forbears as essentially different from us; the world was, but even there, marked similarities and lessons can be found. In my novels, I don't change overall outcomes. They are not 'what if did not happen' fantasies, but rather, 'look how nearly it didn't.' I can't alter the bigger history. That's a different sort of book. The books don't claim to be how it all occurred - but how it plausibly could have. I can't shift recorded events, times and dates to make my stories, so I don't. I look at them again and gratefully exploit ambiguity. They are, I hope authentically imaginative. With hindsight, we can see how matters shaped out, but I try to take readers to a time when the events were current or in the near future, and that future was uncertain. That gives us the opportunity to live and feel with the characters in 'real' time. Of the battle<>stone © series, 'Battle Stone' © 1051-1064 is the first and was originally published in 2008. The current Battle Stone is the 2nd. (revised) edition. The story is the same but I've tidied it in the light of what I've experienced and learned since first offering my work to the public. I trust I've kept it fresh: I don't feel my original zest has diminished. I attempt to avoid stereotyping: not all the Normans and French are bad: not all the English are good. Gay characters are not necessarily evil. Overweight people aren't dull and stupid and the elderly are not all doddery, nor the young reckless and feckless. They are simply people. Next to come are 'Tailèd Star' © 1064-1066 (available soon), 'Wolf Head' © 1066-1070 and 'Paladin' © 1070-1100. I started to risk writing stuff that would be read by others when I became involved with the 'Novel in a Year' and 'A Writer's Year' columns in the Daily Telegraph and saw my name mentioned in print sometimes on the back page of the review section of a national newspaper. The columns were presented by Louise Doughty, novelist, critic and broadcaster and one of the judges for the 2008 Booker Prize. After the columns, she assessed the myTelgraph Short Story Competition, and I was shortlisted several times and had three wins. It felt particularly good to have my stories judged and seemingly approved when Louise was gauging far weightier work for the Booker.