International, the

L?Internationale was a book I spent three years planning and three weeks writing. The idea to entwine and parallel classical Roman historical events with fictitious political drama in the fifties through the fantasies of a deluded criminal was the fruit, originally, of an impulsively drawn-up plot focusing on a very traditional ?who did it? frame of writing. At the time I expected very little to come of it and was actually focusing working on a Napoleonic fiction of similar thought ? similar in that I was always trying to incorporate that element of evasive criminality in my novels. Spies, assassins, informants, murderers; it occurred to me one day shortly after new years of 2009 that the cold war would provide the perfect climate in which to base such a story which could accommodate the lies, deceit and thrill of this novel, which takes some basic historical knowledge to comprehend. The International as it translates is a fictional political/conspiracy thriller centred around the funeral of King George VI of the United kingdom in 1952. One of the most unique features of my story is the way I have paralleled the factual 50?s political scene with events in Ancient Rome. For example; the murderous Harvard sees himself as Caesar. He believes through his ambition and ruthlessness he will seize power and transform his degraded and inept state into an empire again just as Caesar did.