My name is Iain Harper. I’m an historian and an author of biographical historical fiction.
During the 2024/5 academic year I’m studying towards a Masters in Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter.
Avarice of Empire, my debut novel written under the pseudonym C.Q. Turnstone and published by Brindle Books (March 2025), tells the true story of a 19th-century British cavalry officer called Charles Agnew who is 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 magazine sub-editor and contributing author, and co-founding a California-based non-profit that encouraged adventure travellers to share their stories as an antidote to cultural prejudice.
Originally from Hertfordshire, I’ve lived in many different places. Scotland will always be where I feel most at home.
- Member of the Society of Authors
- 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.)
