books articles
I was born in Wimbledon, near London, grew up in Esher and went to school at Charterhouse, near Godalming. I read history at York University from 1979 to 1983 and then theology at Cambridge until 1986 before starting work at a new newspaper called The Independent that same year. From 1988 to 1994, I was The Independent’s Balkan correspondent, covering the break-up of Yugoslavia, the fall of communism in Bulgaria and Romania, the wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and the siege of Sarajevo. At the end of it all, I received an MBE for services for journalism. I returned to London as assistant foreign editor for another few years, during which time I wrote my first book for Yale University Press, ‘Croatia, a Nation Forged in War.’ I left full-time journalism in 2000 to concentrate on writing. ‘Ireland’s Holy Wars’, the ‘Last of the Celts’ and most recently, ‘The Raven King’, followed. I live in Hackney in east London.
Apart from writing my own books, I have also contributed to a number of others. I authored the history sections of the TimeOut and Insight guides to Croatia and I annually update the Croatia section of the Europa Publications yearly Survey of Eastern Europe. I have reviewed books for The Tablet and The Independent and also written for the Sunday Times, The Independent on Sunday and the magazine Daedalus. I edit news and write features for the Balkan Investigative News Network and recently edited Maritza Mestrovic’s biography of her father, the sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, A Gift to Croatia, which is due for publication in 2008.
marcusgt@gmail.com
0207 254 2469
CROATIA: A NATION FORGED IN WAR
Yale University Press, 1997
‘Written with vigour, full of absorbing stories and important insights’ Aleska Djilas, New York Times Book Review
Why Croatia? I was always interested in countries that stood on the crossroads, which had multiple identities. Croatia was perfect, its history interwoven with that of Venice, Austria and Turkey. I started writing when the war, which I had covered from the first day, was still on with Serbia. The conflict shocked me to the core; at the same it got me thinking about the degree to which faith informs nationality and about whether religious affiliation was the main ‘ingredient’ in the identity of Croats or Serbs.
IRELAND’S HOLY WARS: THE STRUGGLE FOR A NATION’S SOUL, 1500-2000 Yale University Press, 2001
‘[A] superbly researched and intelligent vcrsion of the Irish past’
Colm Toibin, New York Review of Books
This subject was a natural follow-on from Croatia. Ulster was our own little piece of the Balkans, complete with its ethno-religious war. After covering the once infamous Drumcree dispute, I got impatient with the accounts I found of ‘The Troubles,’ because they rarely took the story in any detail beyond Partition. I wondered what would have happened if Ireland had become Protestant at the same time as England in the 16th century, and why the attempt to impose ‘our’ religion on the Irish had failed. It was a huge subject to cover but I enjoyed trying.
THE LAST OF THE CELTS
Yale University Press, 2004
‘A very good and special book that every prodigal and true Celt
should read and try and prove wrong’
Malachy McCourt, Washington Post Book World
My year spent in Ireland reminded me of the submerged culture and language of the country, which long predated the English invasions and settlements. Why didn’t most Irish people speak Irish as their first language? I had grown up within earshot of a Celtic language; my father’s first tongue was Welsh. My exploration of what had happened to the kindred languages of the Scots, Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons took me on a long, thrilling journey. It began in the islands off the north-west of Scotland and continued down to the Isle of Man and Wales, across the sea back to Ireland again, then down to Cornwall and Brittany and finally across the ocean to Nova Scotia and Patagonia.
THE RAVEN KING: MATTHIAS CORVINUS AND THE FATE OF HIS LOST LIBRARY Yale University Press, 2008
‘This story will surely fascinate the reader’
John Stoye, University of Oxford
I first heard of Matthias Corvinus, the great Renaissance King of Hungary-Croatia, while I was in Croatia in the 1990s. It took me a decade to return to the subject of this remarkable man who brought the Italian Renaissance to 15th-century Hungary, presiding over a brilliant and eclectic court. Searching for remnants of the reign of the ‘raven king’ took me on another long journey from Yorkshire to Belgium and from Spain to Transylvania. While tracking down the remnants of his ‘lost’ library, I aimed to discover the true significance of a man who held his own age in thrall.
