Three novels. One family. A century crossing borders.
True history reshaped as fiction — beginning in a starving Tuscan village and ending at a Buckingham Palace investiture.
Italian Blood, British Heart
An act of self-sacrifice.
Fredo is repulsed and angry when his mother discloses a family secret. Living conditions in a once-prosperous hilltop village in Tuscany have worsened since the unification of Italy, and like many of his countrymen before him, he leaves for Scotland.
Harsh times await him. Earning a living amidst the poverty of a coal-mining town is not easy. He is determined to shun his Italian heritage and integrate himself fully into a new culture.
He builds a small business while raising a large family — but both world wars impact heavily. During the Second World War each of his six children plays a vital role in defeating the Nazi machine, despite the personal anguish of his internment as an enemy alien.
Fredo's crowning glory is the acceptance of the ultimate award for bravery from King George in Buckingham Palace.
The honour is laden with a heavy heart.
Available in paperback & Kindle.
The youngest VC of the war
During the Second World War, 181 men received the Victoria Cross — the British honours system's highest award for valour. Eighty-five received it posthumously. The youngest soldier of the entire war to be decorated was a five-foot-tall fusilier from Easington Colliery in County Durham.
His name was Dennis Donnini. He was nineteen years old. His parents had emigrated from Castelnuovo in Garfagnana, in the same Tuscan valley as Robert's own family. His father owned a small ice-cream parlour in the pit village.
On 18 January 1945, in Operation Blackcock, Donnini's platoon was pinned down by enemy fire in the village of Stein, Selfkant. Struck in the head, he regained consciousness, charged thirty yards down an exposed road, threw a grenade through a window, and forced the enemy to flee. His unit captured thirty German soldiers and two machine guns. He didn't come home.
Robert had walked past this story all his life — Dennis lay in a Dutch grave; Dennis's family had lived half an hour from Robert's English home — and had never been told. The novel is what happened when he found out.
In the citation
Fusilier Donnini's “fearless and dauntless conduct in the face of an enemy of overwhelming superiority in numbers and weapons brought success to a difficult task and saved the lives of his comrades.”
From the Victoria Cross citation, London Gazette, 1945
Jewish Blood, Italian Heart
A centuries-old secret can no longer be hidden.
Marina is ten years of age. She has been excited for weeks, and the day has finally arrived to receive a medal from the country's leader. She cannot understand why she has been shunned.
A hornet's nest is stirred. A centuries-old secret can no longer be hidden. Nightmares are resurrected.
An epic family saga that travels through history, Jewish Blood, Italian Heart follows Marina's grandparents as they emigrate to find solace and peace — only for their torment to follow them across four continents. Loosely based on the life of the author's own grandfather.
The third novel
In progress.
The closing volume of the Blood Heart Trilogy is currently in development. Sign up below to be among the first to hear when it's announced — and to receive the occasional preview chapter from the author.
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If any of these are true, this is your book
You have Italian roots in Britain
If your surname is Gonnella, Togneri, Santi, Rinaldi, Guidi, Moscardini, Marchi, Coia, Conetta or Crolla — or any of the dozens of Tuscan and Lazio names woven through Britain — this is a mirror.
You love sweeping family sagas
Readers of The Light Between Oceans, Pachinko, and The Garden of Evening Mists will recognise the rhythm — generational, geographic, quietly devastating.
You're drawn to true-history fiction
Real people. Real letters, citations, archives. Imagined inner lives. Where history records what happened, fiction records what it felt like.
You want to understand modern Britain
The chip-shop on the corner, the gelateria on the seafront, the Italian club in the high street — they are not background. They are foreground. This trilogy explains why.