David John Thompson

I'm a retired teacher, a history writer and blogger with a degree and masters in History. My interest in Giacomo Casanova was triggered by wandering into a bookshop on holiday in Llandudno, North Wales, and finding Ian Kelly's wonderful biography of him. That was around 2008. Prompted by my friend, Kev Butters, who wanted to create a graphic novel, we adopted the eighteenth-century Venetian as our protagonist for the story, and I found myself digging further and further into his life and the history of the times. Since I stopped teaching in 2016, I have spent most of my time researching and writing. Helped by happenstance and serendipity my work on Casanova led me to Pen & Sword in 2022. The follow-up book, 'Casanova and Enlightenment', will be coming out in 2024. As for the graphic novel, 'Casanova in Paris', we built a website specifically to host it, alongside over a score of articles, extracts from 'Casanova's Life & Times', and hundreds of blogs on Casanova, history and how we went about creating 'Casanova in Paris'. The site is freely available to all. For anyone who is curious, simply Google casanovashadows.