So, here we are.

Allow me to reintroduce myself

As we near the end of 2023 it seems I’m taking a few steps back towards blogging, or ‘substacking’, as I guess this is. I once used to run a blog way back when, just random thoughts from my restless mind – a Tudor article here, a travel blog there, maybe some sporting musings, nothing grand. And mostly composed during lunch breaks on my BlackBerry. I loved BlackBerry.

You see, I did journalism at university but upon graduating some of us were a bit surprised to learn that having a journalism degree does not make one a qualified journalist. Now, if I had my heart set on becoming the next person made redundant in one of the industry’s regular culls, I may have worked hard to pass some of the NCTJ exams and followed that path. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t do much afterwards, but in a fit of boredom in my mid-20s started blogging. They weren’t good, they were poorly written, but it gave me something to do, I guess.

After becoming trapped in something of a Tudor obsession, I wrote a few blogs, and one in particular caught the attention of a commissioning editor. The blog was about Tudor locations in Wales, somewhat inspired by Suzannah Lipscomb’s wonderful ‘Travel Companion to Tudor England’ book. The editor wondered if I could turn such an idea into a book of my own, and before I knew it, I had my first book contract. ‘Tudor Wales’ was released in March 2014, and away we were.

The blogging gradually fell by the wayside, replaced by building a social media presence and working on my follow-up books. Once you start writing professionally, it turns out you can’t stop. ‘York Pubs’ was released in 2016, followed by ‘The House of Beaufort: The Bastard Line that Captured the Crown’ in 2017, ‘Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders: Simnel, Warbeck, and Warwick’ in 2021, and soon ‘The Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor’ in 2024. As you can see, the Tudor thing never went away.

Since then, I have also become a trustee of the Henry Tudor, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, have delivered over seventy talks at some of the most prestigious historical festivals in Britain, and featured on mainstream national television as a featured expert. Not bad, I think, when you consider it started with a bit of boring blogging on a BlackBerry.

So, here we are. What to expect? I don’t know, to be honest. It seems substacking is the new ‘fad’ for authors, so I’ll try and use it and see where we go. Some thoughts about writing perhaps, a bit of historical unloading, perhaps a few book reviews, let’s see.

Anyway, nice to meet you.

Oh, my name is Nathen, and my cat is called Vera.