We’ll be bringing you over the next few months case studies and author stories from some of the other that we have worked with at New Generation Publishing.

NGP has republished two notable historical novels about Spain by Howard Headworth. And is pleased to announce that it is publishing Howard Headworth’s Spanish translations of, Al-Andalus: Sus últimos años and España en la búsqueda de su destino: Los años de Colón. Both books will also be available as e-books, as are the two books in English.

Howard was born in Newport, south Wales, at the outbreak of the last war. With his family he survived the blitz the day before his second birthday.

He was educated at Newport High School and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he obtained an Honours degree in geology, and at Imperial College London where he obtained a diploma in engineering geology.

A spell as a soils engineer with George Wimpey was followed by a career move into the water industry as a hydrologist and later as a hydrogeologist. He is a chartered geologist in the Geological Society, a Eurogeologist, a prize winner with the former Institution of Water Engineers, and the author of numerous technical papers. Latterly, he was managing director of Southern Science, a constituent company of the Southern Water Group based in Worthing. With his wife, Sarah Steines, he is the author of the best-seller English/Spanish Dictionary of Environmental Science and Environmental Engineering (John Wiley and Sons) published in 1998.

Howard Headworthhas lived in Almería in southern Spain with his wife for twenty years. Enthralled by the vestiges of the former Muslim kingdom which are evident in all corners of Andalucia, he set out to link the historical events surrounding the demise of the Moors with descriptions of its spectacularly harsh landscape. Journeys to Cuba and the Dominican Republic (formerly La Isla Española) to see the places that Christopher Columbus described in his ships logs, all formed part of his wide-ranging research.

Howard Headworth’s fabulous novels - The Al-Andalus Chronicle and its sequel Spain’s Pursuit of Destiny: The Columbus Years - describe the climactic events during a crucial hinge-point in Spain’s colourful history around the year 1500. Significantly, it is contemporaneous with the Tudor dynasty of Henry VII and Henry VIII.

Through the eyes of Pedro Togeiro, a half Christian, half Jewish teenager (brought up in the mountainous northern corner of Almería, graced by the spectacular castle of Vélez Blanco) Howard paints a vivid, harshly beautiful picture of a world undergoing a sea change and a country at the crossroads. The path Spain chose brought incredible riches - but at what cost?

Glorious descriptions of action, the sweep of historical events, a panoply of characters, and the tide of emotions running through the heart of our young man make the Al-Andalus Chronicle a treasure. It describes the death throes of the 700-year Moorish kingdom in southern Spain as it is vanquished by the might and religious zeal of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragón. 1492, a momentous year in Spain, saw Granada, with its fabulous Alhambra palace, finally fall to the Christians. Bereft of family, tortured by the Inquisition, and caught between Christians and Muslims, Pedro joins Christopher Columbus on his voyage of discovery to the New World in the same eventful year.

Spain’s Pursuit of Destiny continues the storyline as the Catholic Monarchs, buoyed by the gold and silver arriving from the New World, set out to place Spain on the international stage. Our hero Pedro joins Don Gonzalo, el Gran Capitán, Spain’s greatest military commander, in his campaigns to oust the French from Italy, while Pedro’s raven-haired Moorish wife, Raquel, joins sixteen-year-old princess Juana in Flanders for her wedding to the womanising Archduke Philip of Austria. Meanwhile, the dynastic Borgias are scandalising Rome, and Columbus continues his quest for gold in the Indies with three further voyages. With the death of Isabel in 1504 and the growing madness of heiress Juana, Spain is drawn inexorably into the Habsburg Empire and its eventual decline.

Howard Headworth can be contacted on (0034) 950 380056 and at headworth@telefonica.net