TerryBrighton.com

Terry Brighton lives in Tamaimo on the slopes of the Mount Teide volcano in Tenerife. He writes on military history and, with his wife Linda, on love and sexuality.

Site relaunched 24 August 2010

Welcome to my new website. Here you can discover more about me, my books and my work in progress. My two subject areas have been fundamental to the human experience from the beginning of time: war and sexuality.

Bienvenido a mi sitio web. Estoy el escritor de la historia militar. Vivo en las islas Canarias con mi mujer Linda. Mi libro más popular en español es El Valle de la Muerte: Balaclava y la carga de la Brigada Ligera (edhasa).

Terry Brighton

Latest reader feedback

I've just plunged through your book - the most thrilling days of concentrated, headlong reading I can remember in years. Peter M Webster (US)

Masters of Battle (UK)
Patton, Montgomery, Rommel (US)

Teaming up with 'General Patton' to promote this triple biography of the three most controversial generals of the Second World War, in which Terry portrays the clash of mighty armies as a personal bout between three men.

Latest news

• Terry awarded the Imperial Service Medal

• terrybrighton.com redeveloped and relaunched 24 August 2010

• Patton, Montgomery, Rommel paperback due 2 November 2010

Latest interview: 22 August 2010
Terry was interviewed by Alan Parr in Tamaimo

Alan: Everything has changed for you since we last spoke.

Terry: Yes - in a single week I became sixty, retired from the Ministry of Defence, and remarried. The following month I and my new wife Linda moved from England to Tenerife in the Canary Isles.

Alan: Tell me something about Tenerife.

Terry: Nelson lost his right arm in a sea-battle for the island with the Spanish in 1797 - he also lost the battle. If he had won it, Tenerife would be an English possession now, but I'm glad he lost. The Spanish retain that passion the English have lost to their timidity.

Alan: What do you mean by that?

Terry: Linda and I are passionate people, and it's still OK here to have deep feelings and express them forcefully. The knowledge that on this island the lava still bubbles deep below us symbolises it all.

Alan: Tenerife is a dormant volcano and you live on its lower slopes - is that dangerous?

Terry: Mount Teide erupts about once every 100 years and the last burst was in 1909, so an eruption is due. Linda and I plan to embrace at the final moment so that archaeologists can dig us up in 1000 years and put us on display in a museum somewhere.

Alan: You joke about it, but I sense the danger, however slight, appeals to you.

Terry: England is too safe. There's an 'edge' to life here. So life is more intense. My writing has changed too.

Alan: You need to explain that.

Terry: On the obviously level, I can now devote all my time to writing. But it's more than that. In England we lived in Lincoln where the roads are flat and straight. In Tenerife we live on the slopes of Mount Teide where the roads are steep, continuously snaking and the drops to the side are huge. I feel that so much writing in England is flat, straight and safe. Here I can work on the edge, with verve and passion!

Alan: You clearly enjoy life in Tenerife, but there must be negatives.

Terry: First, the mosquitoes. They love me. One remedy is Vitamin B6, found in brewer's yeast and thus in beer, although the consumption of a considerable quantity is required for the best effect. Second, the calima. That's a hot, dry wind blowing in from the Sahara, carrying fine sand which hangs in the air and produces a smog-like effect.

Alan: Tell me about your writing day.

Terry: I prefer to start at 5.00 each morning. My study window looks out on our garden - orange and lemon trees, honeysuckle, and man-sized cacti - and as the sun comes up the lizards crawl out of the dry-stone walling. Sometimes I work all day, sometimes I don't. There isn't a typical day.

Alan: For those who don't know, what do you write about?

Terry: There are only two subjects that interest me, and both have been with mankind since the very beginning - war and sex. My interest in sex came first - well I suppose it would. As a young theology student I wrote my thesis on Religious Belief and Sexual Practice. After being ordained as an Anglican priest my first parish was Hereford, home of the SAS, and those guys gave me my interest in military history.

Alan: You're completing two books in September and they reflect those two subject areas?

Terry: Yes, but you're going to interview me on each of them for the website, so lets move on.

Alan: Any advice for would-be writers?

Terry: Don't do it. There are too many writers already.

Alan: That sounds harsh.

Terry: Look, the only justification for writing anything is the near certainty that tens of thousands of readers will buy it. If I didn't think that about my current work then I wouldn't bother. I don't believe writers who say their work 'had to be written'. Nothing has to be written.

Alan: For a writer you seem unusually focussed on marketing and sales.

Terry: I get angry at any writer who is not. Why the hell should a publisher want a book unless he/she has a damn good idea it will sell. And any writer who doesn't get involved in marketing is plain lazy.

Alan: What do you enjoy, apart from writing?

Terry: My wife, of course. Fiestas - and there's always one happening somewhere nearby. Walking our dog Belle (de Jour). And I read widely.

Alan: Do you have any vices?

Terry: All of them. Next question.

Alan: Your're completing two books in September. What next?

Terry: For both of them I have a follow-up book researched and waiting to be written. In the meantime I'm working on something else - don't ask.

Alan: Thanks for talking to me, Terry.

Terry: Just don't mess with my answers.

Alan: What if I do?

Terry: I know where you live.

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