Authors
Press
About
Submissions
Contact Us
Penmore Press is pleased to introduce new author Philip K. Allan and his exciting Age of Sail series, The Alexander Clay Series, set in the late 18th Century. The first of the series, The Captain’s Nephew is forthcoming in January.
Philip Allan is an exciting new author who comes from Watford in the United Kingdom. A few years ago he left his career as a senior manager in the motor industry, where he’d spent most of his working life, to concentrate on his novels full-time.
Philip studied the 18th-century navy as part of his history degree at London University. It ignited a lifelong passion for the era, which stretched from the age of piracy via Cook’s voyages of exploration to the battles and campaigns of Nelson. A member of the Society for Nautical Research and a keen sailor, Philip now enjoys exploring the subject’s unrivaled potential for storytelling through his own writing. On the one hand there is the strange, claustrophobic wooden world of the period’s ships, and on the other hand there is the boundless freedom to move those ships around the globe wherever the narrative takes them.
Philip’s inspiration for his Alexander Clay series comes from novelists like C. S. Forester and Patrick O’Brien. His prose is heavily influenced by O’Brien’s immersive style, with its meticulously researched period language and authentic nautical detail to draw the reader into a different world. But the Alexander Clay books also bring something fresh to the genre, offering a cast of fully formed lower-deck characters along with their officers. Think Downton Abbey on a ship, with the lower deck housing the below-stairs servants.
Philip lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and his two teenage daughters. When he isn’t writing, he plays golf, goes skiing, and loves to cook and entertain.
