Published in May 2024 but begun back in 1999, A Rougher Task is the first in a trilogy of military historical romance novels set against the backdrop of the bloody, epic and emotive Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. The story follows a company of sappers from Brompton Barracks in Kent to the veldt of South Africa. Lieutenant Albert Bond is an academy graduate from a wealthy background forced to rethink his preoccupations about class, status and the glories of service when his strict, simplistic sergeant appoints low born, handsome Sapper Jack Coleman to serve as his batman, with life changing results for both of them. As the two young men begin to discover their feelings, they find that they have “a rougher task in hand than to drive liking to the name of love” * as their company finds itself shipped off to the unfamiliar landscape of Natal, and the British invasion of Zululand in January 1879…

* Claudio, Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare