My name is Iain Harper. I write biographical historical fiction about people whose fascinating lives will resonate with yours across the divide of time.
I’m currently seeking literary agency representation for my debut novel. Avarice of Empire tells the true story of the life and death of Captain Charles Agnew of the 16th Lancers, a 19th century British cavalry officer memorialised in a unique way at Canterbury Cathedral.
My interest in history takes multiple forms and has many origins. Throughout my childhood, for instance, I loved listening to my grandfather’s tales of wartime service in India; as a teenager my empathy and imagination were sparked by a school trip to the First World War battlefields in France and Belgium; and my parents’ tireless genealogical sleuthing (long before records were online) has endowed me with a keen intuition for research.
During most of the past 30 years or so my career has revolved around marketing, and digital marketing in particular. I’ve also had a bit to do with the international motorcycle travel community, including event organisation, being a sub-editor and contributing author for a magazine called Overland, and co-founding a California-based non-profit, which encouraged adventure travellers to share their stories as an antidote to cultural prejudice. In 2019 my partner and I launched the Vicarious Festival, which aimed to celebrate cultural diversity through travel literature and photography, and counted Joanna Lumley among its patrons. Sadly, the coronavirus pandemic claimed the festival before its inaugural event.
In 2021 I left marketing and the motorcycle industry behind to work as a personal trainer and vegan nutritionist. Helping people to move better and eat healthier is a thoroughly satisfying way to earn a living, and it also gives me more time to study, research and write.
Originally from Hertfordshire, I’m now in Somerset. I’ve lived in quite a few places in between, including Arizona for a little while and six months volunteering at Europe’s oldest Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Scotland will likely always be where I feel most at home.
- Member of the Historical Novel Society
ThreesWrite is a play on the command, “Threes right,” an abbreviation of, “Wheel to the right in a column of threes,” used by cavalry and other regiments of the British Army during the period depicted in Avarice of Empire (and more widely throughout the military in Britain and elsewhere before and since.)
