John Broughton was born in Cleethorpes Lincolnshire UK in 1948: just one of many post-war babies. After attending grammar school and studying to the sound of Bob Dylan, he went to Nottingham University and studied Medieval and Modern History (Archaeology subsidiary). The subsidiary course led to one of his greatest academic achievements: tipping the soil content of a wheelbarrow from the summit of a spoil heap on an old lady hobbling past the dig, luckily they subsequently became firm friends.
He did many different jobs while living in Radcliffe-on-Trent, Leamington, Glossop, the Scilly Isles, Puglia and Calabria. They include teaching English and History, managing a Day Care Centre, being a Director of a Trade Institute and teaching university students English. He even tried being a fisherman and a flower picker when he was on St. Agnes island, Scilly. He has lived in Calabria since 1992 where he settled into a long-term job at the University of Calabria, teaching English. No doubt his lovely Calabrian wife Maria stopped him being restless.
His two kids are grown up now, but he wrote books for them when they were little. Hamish Hamilton and then Thomas Nelson published six of these in England in the 1980s. They are now out of print. He’s a granddad and, happily, the parents gratifyingly named his grandson Dylan. He decided to take up writing again late in his career. When teaching and working as a translator, you don’t really have time for writing. As soon as he stopped the translation work, he resumed writing in 2014.
The fruit of that decision was his first historical novel, The Purple Thread, followed by Wyrd of the Wolf, now a trilogy. Both are set in his favourite Anglo-Saxon period. His third and fourth novels, another trilogy, are Saints and Sinners, Mixed Blessings and the Wyvern's End, set on the cusp of the eighth century in Mercia and Lindsey. A fifth, Sward and Sword, is about the great Earl Godwine. Creativia Publishing has released Perfecta Saxonia and Ulf’s Tale about King Aethelstan and King Cnut’s empire respectively. In May 2019, they published In the Name of the Mother, a sequel to Wyrd of the Wolf and 2023 Offa: Rex Mercorium.. Creativia/Next Chapter also published Angenga, a time-travel novel linking the ninth century to the twenty-first. This novel inspired John Broughton’s next venture, a series of seven novels about psychic investigator Jake Conley, whose retrocognition takes him back to Anglo-Saxon times. In another departure, he published a fantasy novel, Whirligig.
Other historical novels followed including the St Cuthbert Trilogy and the Sceapig Chronicles Trilogy. Seeking to expand his horizons, he wrote his first mystery novel, The Quasimodo Killings, Book 1 of the Vance and Shepherd series. The London Tram Murders is Book 2. but now there are 6 books in the sries.. In another departure, he wrote The Remnant, a sci-fi novel about the Apocalypse. Currently he is writing Book 3 of another historical trilogy - The Saxon Shore Trilogy.
In all, he hasthirty-eight novels published, which can be seen with relative information at the author’s website: www.saxonquill.com
