Monday 29 July 2013

Knights Templar Vault

On the eve of publication of the Harper Collin's American edition of The Tragedy of the Templars I have been interviewed on the Knights Templar Vault website.  Asked about the background to writing this new Templar book, I spoke of an account of travels in the East by Henry Maundrell called A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter, AD 1697.

I was haunted by something written by the English traveller Henry Maundrell.  Even four centuries after the fall of Acre in 1291, when the last Templars were driven from the coast of Outremer, the devastation wrought by the Mamelukes was still apparent.  In 1697 Maundrell recorded the ‘many ruins of castles and houses, which testify that this country, however it be neglected at present, was once in the hands of a people that knew how to value it, and thought it worth the defending’.

For the entire interview, click here.

And you can follow the Knights Templar Vault on Facebook, which also carries the interview, by clicking here.