

"I'm not going to take credit for it, per se. In nearly 15 years, it's definitely opened up. Then I had no middle I had students and retirees, and now it's a complete range of ages, people with different backgrounds. My first book came out in 2009 and I'd say it used to be a very stereotypical history audience – mainly retirees, basically. And it's definitely widened over the years. "I was thinking about this the other day because someone asked me a similar question about the audiences I saw on book tours. We've got a lot to talk about – including the 11 albums that changed his life – so let's get started… And we also discover that he's also probably the first (and only?) historian to DJ at the Ministry Of Sound. And the Hagstrom is just a small part of it. A while his choice of guitar, ever-growing collection of tattoos and the fact Duff McKagan is amongst his readers, suggests Dan's a rocker, his tastes are far broader than any pigeonhole can handle. It turns out music is a massive part of Dan's life, crossing into his work as an author in ways we couldn't have imagined. And we'll get to that, but the guitar we spotted got us wondering about a possible other string to his longbow. And after authoring ten tomes with over one million copies sold he's now moving into historical fiction with Essex Dogs.


Dan's inclusive and engaging style has made him the kind of historian who helps to attract new interest in the history of the Middle Ages with the subjects he's written about including the Plantagenets, Knights Templar and The Crusades.
