D J G Berkeley

Dan Berkeley lives with his wife and three children in Cumbria, near to the edge of the Lake District.

He is a doctor at Maryport GP practice and BBC radio Cumbria's resident doctor. He started writing eight years ago, but had the idea for his first book 'Sacramentum' five years before that, whilst awaking from a barely remembered dream. He has been interested in ancient history since he was a child, but was fairly useless at Latin whilst at school. Unfortunately he thought that to do medicine you needed A levels all in sciences, and so didn't do classical civilisation as a subject past GCSE. He therefore spent most of his time at medical school, reading books about ancient Rome and Greece, and drinking ale.

Whilst at school he did try writing some short stories, but with no exceptions--these were awful. Even his English teacher told him they were awful. Having read ancient history, and enjoying the works of Bernard Cornwell, Conn Iggulden, Wilbur Smith, and Robert Harris, he felt it was time to try to combine three ideas: write an alternative history in the style of 'Fatherland', with the type of action, and characterisation, of an Iggulden or Cornwell novel, and the sickening descriptive brutality of a Smith book. At least he was writing what he wanted to read.

When he is not writing, he also enjoys: strategic board gaming, medicine, brewing ale, drumming (badly), walking on the fells, and trying to eat as many different types of animal as possible.

'Sacramentum', his debut novel was released in 2012 to favourable reviews and media interest. It was followed up in 2014 by 'Impietas'. The final part in the trilogy, Ultionis will be released in December 2015. Dan Berkeley is also the author of a communication skills guide to the CSA, the final part of the UK MRCGP exams.