From Publishing News (Frankfurt Book Fair Daily), 6 October 2006

Author feature: 'Living Fiction', by David Gibbins

 A passion for underwater archaeology fuels David Gibbins' thrillers

WRITING AND ARCHAEOLOGY have been my over-riding passions for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a house full of books, and both my parents were writers. We had circumnavigated the world by sea by the time I was six, and lived in New Zealand and England before settling in Canada. I think these early experiences fuelled my wanderlust, and unleashed a vivid imagination - I've always found it easy to conjure up past worlds, and to 'live' my fiction as I write it.

We never had a television, but the rare occasions when I saw one had a profound influence. One was the Apollo 11 moon landing; another was Captain Cousteau. It was a close run thing, but Cousteau won out. I became obsessed with underwater exploration and learned to dive as soon as I could, at the age of 15 in 1977. Even now, after having spent much time exploring on land as well, in mountains and deserts, jungles and polar ice, I still regard myself first and foremost as an underwater archaeologist, and that passion will always be a driving force behind my fiction.

Like writers, the best archaeologists have an innate gift; you can learn the tools of the trade, but without that flair something will always be missing. It has always amazed me how many professional archaeologists seem to lack that essential excitement, how much the nature of the discipline seems to stifle it. I think this is a problem with science generally. Partly, this has to do with the urge to speculate, partly with a flair for discovery. I have always been good at finding things: as a boy I discovered a site that dates among the oldest in North America. As a diver, I've made some amazing discoveries: a unique Roman surgeon's instrument kit; exquisite vases from a classical Greek shipwreck; the fabled walls of ancient Carthage, lost for millennia under sea and sand. To me, there's little more astonishing in fiction than the reality of archaeology - you only have to think of the Egyptian pyramids, and imagine trying to convince people that such things existed - and my own discoveries have taught me to put few bounds on my imagination.

After finishing a PhD at Cambridge University, I was a full-time academic in Britain for most of the 1990s, teaching archaeology, art history and art, and publishing articles and monographs on archaeology. I loved conveying my excitement to students, but it was a time of increasing malaise in British universities - huge increases in student numbers, under-resourcing and mismanagement - and I resigned my position to pursue a long-standing ambition to write archaeological thrillers and other books. In one respect, the transition has been seamless - so much of archaeology is speculation, not much different from well-informed fiction! And I've tried to convey the same excitement to readers, as well as relishing being a novelist and writing action and adventure. I'm now a full-time writer for most of the year, but the success of my novels has opened up a whole new realm of possibility for me as an archaeologist, and allowed me to plan expeditions which I hope will fuel my fiction for a long time to come.

David Gibbins was a guest of Headline at the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair. This article can also be found at http://www.publishingnews.co.uk