David Gilman

David Gilman has followed an unusually varied career that has included work as a firefighter, a professional soldier in the Parachute Regiment, a photographer and a marketing executive in South Africa. He later became a screenwriter, contributing for several years to the television drama A Touch of Frost. Those experiences inform a direct understanding of danger, teamwork and endurance, qualities that recur throughout his fiction. He lives in Devon and writes both historical novels and contemporary thrillers.

Gilman is best known for the Master of War series, which follows the archer Thomas Blackstone from the early stages of the Hundred Years’ War into the political and military struggles of fourteenth-century Europe. The books combine major battles with sieges, mercenary service, shifting allegiance and the slow development of a professional soldier. His other historical novels include The Last Horseman, set around the South African War and the First World War, and Night Flight to Paris, a resistance thriller set during the Second World War. Gilman’s work suits readers interested in campaign fiction, weaponry and the physical cost of survival.