Introduction-

"How I loved writing these two books’

The words, the images, the very colours of the English countryside, its smells, its feeling of ancientness, everything just tumbled out whenever I picked up my pen. It was like having two very noisy children playing round my feet. They were good times, they were the best of times, the years I spent writing The Temple of Optimism and Thomas Gage.

What tempted me away was the vision, when describing the rattle of the primitive trains in Thomas Gage, of the vast and magnificent locomotives that used to ply the railroads of continental Europe. I began to see them in my dreams, shouldering aside snow and wolves on the journey to – to where? Na Moskvu! My destination could only be Russia. In what period? It could only be the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. I’ll return to the English historical novel sometime, but for the moment I’ve been overtaken by a character called Charlie Doig and his steamy adventures.