Humphrey Hawksley

Humphrey Hawksley has reported on key trends, events and conflicts from all over the world.

His work as a BBC foreign correspondent has taken him to crises on every continent.

Hawksley's new Rake Ozenna thriller is Operation Icebreaker.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Hawksley's reply:

I have several on the go, all on my Kindle, and all in the swirl around my curiosity research on Arctic action.

The Wager and the Bear by John Ironmonger is a heart-warming tale about small communities and the wider world. This is one of the few novels with a setting in Qaanaaq, in far north Greenland, the Arctic area where my latest Operation Icebreaker is set. It’s a hard place to get to, and John wrote from talking to people and his own research, and his vivid descriptions are pretty much spot on.

Alongside, I’m deep into Cold Rush: The Astonishing True Story of the New Quest for the Polar North by Martin Breum, a gripping non-fiction account of the race for power in the Arctic, explaining exactly how Greenland, colonised by Denmark, fits in. I never knew that Denmark had lodged a sovereignty claim on the North Pole, and I am writing this on the day Donald Trump announced a new deal over Greenland that he had threatened to annexe!

I’m a big fan of Marc Cameron whose latest Back Track I’ve just finished with Alaskan Federal Marshall Arliss Cutter. No-one writes cold like Marc who previously did the Tom Clancy franchise. Action, cold and Alaska fit perfectly into forging the environment for my lead character, Rake Ozenna who comes from a remote Alaskan island on the Russian border.

I’ll shortly be diving into a historical Arctic non-fiction, Giles Milton’s Empire at the Edge of the World, an amazing story of Britain’s attempt to claim the remote and frozen Arctic Wrangel Island, now controlled by Russia. Giles has given us a harrowing story of greed, ambition and triumph in the harshest conditions and sits well with Breum’s modern day descriptions of Denmark trying to prove that it owns the North Pole.

Visit Humphrey Hawksley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The History Book.

My Book, The Movie: Security Breach.

My Book, The Movie: Man on Ice.

Writers Read: Humphrey Hawksley (May 2018).

The Page 69 Test: Man on Ice.

The Page 69 Test: Man on Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue