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I was born in 1962 in Saskatoon, Canada, to English parents. In 1964 we moved to New Zealand, but four years later returned to Canada where my parents settled permanently. They were both professors at the University of Guelph - my father became chair of microbiology and associate vice-president academic, and my mother chair of animal and poultry science.
Apart from a year in England I went to school in Canada, but then went to university in England at the age of 18 and was based there for the next two decades. I read Ancient Mediterranean Studies at the University of Bristol, graduating with First Class Honours in 1983, and then completed a PhD in Archaeology at Cambridge University as a
Research Scholar of Corpus Christi College. I traveled extensively in the Mediterranean region and beyond, as far as Central Asia, some of it as a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellow. I then held a permanent faculty position at the University of Liverpool, where I taught archaeology, ancient history and art for seven years.
My passion since boyhood had been maritime archaeology, and I learned
to dive in at the age of 15. I have led many expeditions to study ancient sites underwater, including the excavation of Greek and Roman shipwrecks off Sicily and the submerged remains of ancient Carthage. I have more than fifty publications arising from these projects. I continue to be involved in archaeological exploration, and this provides the backdrop for my fiction.
In 2001 I gave up my academic position in order to write full-time,
and moved back to Canada where I now do most of my writing on our family farm in Ontario. Since then I have published two novels, Atlantis and Crusader Gold, which have both been bestsellers and translated into many languages.
I have a seven-year old daughter who lives with her mother in England, but accompanies me often to Canada and elsewhere on my travels.
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