Ten years of writing history

'I've been sitting at a desk writing history books for something over ten years. It's been engrossing, demanding and occasionally exhausting. This is a good moment to take stock. What does it add up to? Four books in various languages (the last still in proof), thousands of pages of handwritten notes.

Despite the impressive number of different language versions it's been a modest living not a handsome one - I'm still waiting for the film rights. People come by and take out options but I've become realistic. I spent three unpaid months writing outlines for a Game of Thrones style history epic based on one of my books at a publisher's behest - no luck so far. There's an element of gambling in all this - the next book could make it, a producer could get serious, but I've learned that seasoned punters read the odds - a history of Venice is never going to be Fifty Shades of Grey.'

Roger Crowley, author of Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, Empires of the Sea and three other books on the Andrew Lownie Literary Agency site