ABOUT
THE STORY SO FAR...
Damian’s novels have been translated into twenty-seven languages and published in over forty countries.
His two most recent, Tomorrow and The Colour Storm, are for adults. The previous three, The Storm Begins, Circus Maximus and Nightship To China – making up The History Keepers series - are aimed at children but enjoyed by adults too.
In the UK, Penguin Random House have put out all Damian’s books, whilst in America, he’s published by HarperCollins.
Damian is attracted to epic tales. Tomorrow is a love story about immortality that spans two hundred and fifty years. The Colour Storm, set in art world of the renaissance, is about the search for a new colour and the dangerous competition between the great painters of day. The History Keepers, “an intelligent, quick-witted” adventure series, is about a boy who discovers his parents are lost in history and must join a secret service to track them down.
LIGHTS
Damian loves nothing more to bring people and places vividly to life. “I need the reader to feel exactly how it was, how it sounded, felt, smelt.” Sixteenth-century Venice, revolutionary France, Ming-dynasty China, Rome in the first century, England in the age of enlightenment. Each story moves at a thrilling pace, packs hefty emotional punches, whilst being drenched in art, history and science.
Damian was born in London, growing up on Gloucester Road. As a boy, his non-stop trips to every nearby museum - The Natural History Museum, The Victoria and Albert, The Science Museum – shaped everything that was to come. From archaeology, to cosmology, to product design, to quantum mechanics, there is nothing that Damian isn’t fascinated by. He still lives in the centre of city, now with his husband and dogs.
Damian originally trained as an artist and scenic designer, before becoming an actor and then screenwriter. His first script, Seventh Heaven, was bought by legendary producer Graham Broadbent (Three Billboards). Amongst more than a dozen projects, he worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the screen adaption of The Phantom Of The Opera and with the Henson family on a live-action version of Puss In Boots. He began writing novels fourteen years ago. “To get to paint the full picture. Be editor, cameraman, lighting and costume designer.”
His sixth novel, provisionally titled The English Boy, “a ghost story like other”, a short, sharp epic, and tearjerker, is the first to be set in present-day London. As well as being the most emotional and personal of his books, it is also a love letter to the city of his birth. “In London, you feel it everywhere, along the river, in the theatres and galleries, the imprint of the past. The paths that Shakespeare, Newton and Wren passed down still carry their traces. And it remains the most dynamic-thinking city in the world.”
Since he was a boy, Damian has loved building things. He learnt carpentry, built buildings and has made numerous artworks and pieces of furniture over the years. In 2023 he launched a collection of pieces to accompany the release of The Colour Storm. From now, Damian plans to produce a new set inspired by each novel.
He’s passionate about travelling for research. “To travel is to live,” as a character says in Tomorrow. He has lived in Rome, Venice, explored China and even stayed on Mont St Michel in Normandy whilst working on The History Keepers.
Passionate about learning and education, Damian has visited over a hundred schools and for decade was the patron of the charity, Kids In Museums.
LIGHTS
LIGHTS
LIGHTS