Green, Dominic 1970-

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Green, Dominic 1970-

PERSONAL:

Born 1970, in London, England; son of Benny (a musician) Green. Education: St. John's College, Oxford, A.B., A.M.; Harvard University, A.M.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Cambridge, MA. Agent—David Higham Assoc., 5-8 Lower John St., Golden Sq., London W1F 9HA, England; and InkWell Management, 521 5th Ave., 26th Fl., New York, NY 10175.

CAREER:

Writer, musician.

WRITINGS:

Benny Green: Words and Music: A Biography, London House (London, England), 2000.

(Editor) Such Sweet Thunder: Benny Green on Jazz, Scribner (London, England), 2001.

The Double Life of Doctor Lopez: Spies, Shakespeare and the Plot to Poison Elizabeth I, Century (London, England), 2003.

Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869-1899, Free Press (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

British writer Dominic Green is the son of jazz musician Benny Green. Early in his career Green played jazz guitar for numerous jazz and rock groups. Turning from music to writing, Green penned a portrait of his father and the jazz scene in England in the 1950s and 1960s with his 2000 work Benny Green: Words and Music: A Biography. A reviewer for M2 Presswire called the book an "entertaining and moving story."

History of a different sort is at the heart of Green's 2007 title, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869-1899. Here Green tells the story of the British Empire's involvement in the Sudan in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, a clash of Christianity and Islam, as represented, respectively, by the British General Charles George Gordon and Mohammed Ahmed, also known as the Mahdi. Arab nationalism was also blended into this confrontation that foreshadows twenty-first-century relations between the West and Islam. The three empires of the title were the British Empire, the apocalyptic one fashioned by Mahdi and his followers, and the Egyptian tyranny of Khedive Ishmail. Using newly transcribed government documents for his research, Green presented a "riveting historical narrative," according to Entertainment Weekly contributor Michelle Kung. Reviewing Three Empires on the Nile in Booklist, Gilbert Taylor similarly termed the work a "panoramic narrative [that] re-creates these three decades with remarkable dynamism." A Kirkus Reviews critic concluded that Three Empires on the Nile was a "vivid history presented in a style that has more in common with epic movies than with most historical texts." A Publishers Weekly contributor described the book as a "formidable work of popular narrative history."

Green told CA: "I became interested in writing through reading. When I find that no one has yet written about a topic I'm interested in, I feel compelled to write about it. My father was a journalist, so it doesn't surprise me.

"Stylistically, I try to learn from fiction and nonfiction writers. I learned how to tell a story from nineteenth-century novelists, and the value of a light touch from P.G. Wodehouse. My favorite historians are also great stylists: [Edward] Gibbon, A.J.P. Taylor, and Barbara Tuchman. In terms of subject matter, I don't feel obliged to restrict myself to one era or topic. So far I have written about jazz, Shakespeare, espionage, imperialism, and religious fundamentalism. Of course, I'm on the lookout for a subject that will tie all these together."

When asked to describe his writing process, Green said, "Characterized by the early start, and generous use of file cards, colored pencils, and imported English candy. For every day spent writing, I spend three researching. Some sections are written in longhand on cards while research is still fresh; others are compiled from the notes up to a year later. The more I write, the further I jog in the afternoon. A large first draft is reduced by about a third in a complete rewrite, and then further reduced in the third draft. After that, I wean myself off the candy, tidy up the editing, and forget about the jogging."

When asked the most surprising thing he has learned as a writer, he responded: "That apart from the pleasure it gave me, it could mean something to others too."

When asked which of his books are his favorites, Green said: "The next one, because I've already read the others."