Swimming with sea lions, or Angus Watson, to be the guest of the Literature Section!

Asia, forklifts and Big Foot or the beginnings of his career

Angus Watson graduated from the University of Bristol with a degree in geography and decided to spend the next decade of his life, travelling through Asia, living in Sydney and London, working as a forklift operator and an investment banker. In his thirties he became a freelance features writer, writing chiefly for British national newspapers. Articles included looking for Bigfoot in the USA for the Telegraph, diving on the scuppered World War One German fleet at Scapa Flow for the Financial Times and swimming with Galapagos sea lions for the Times.

When newspapers were crippled by the internet and could no longer pay him to do fun things, Angus embarked on his lifelong desire to be a novelist.

Julius Caesar and the Vikings – about his books

Angus’ first historical fantasy trilogy is Age of Iron, published in 2014 and 2015. It’s an epic adventure set at the end of Briton’s Iron Age, re-telling the story of Julius Caesar’s invasion from the British point of view. The first novel was short-listed for the Morningstar Award and all his books have had much critical acclaim for their dark humour and wonderful characters..

He came up with the idea for West of West, his Vikings and Indians trilogy, while driving and hiking through North America’s magnificent landscapes and wondering what went on there before the European invasion. The first book, You Die When You Die, was published in June 2017. The Land You Never Leave was published September 2018 and Where Gods Fear To Go is coming in December 2019.

You can find Angus on twitter as @GusWatson, on Instagram as angus_watson_novelist and on flickr as angusw01 . His website is www.guswatson.com