The Hound and the Portrait
There are some stories that arrive quietly.
A thought occurs. An image stays in the mind a little longer than it should. A question refuses to go away.
For me, The Hound and the Portrait began with that kind of question.
What if a portrait contained a secret that someone was prepared to kill to protect?
I have always been drawn to the places where history becomes uncertain—the gaps between what we know and what we can only suspect. The official record tells us what happened, but it cannot tell us everything that happened. People kept secrets. Governments concealed information. Families protected reputations. And sometimes the most important evidence was never recognised as evidence at all.
That possibility fascinated me.
I began to imagine a painting that had survived its original circumstances. Decades could pass. People could die. Political alliances could change. Yet the painting would remain, quietly carrying something that nobody had understood.
That became the heart of The Hound and the Portrait.
A darker Victorian Britain
I wanted to set the story in 1891 because Victorian Britain offers such a compelling contradiction.
It was an age of confidence and anxiety.
Britain was powerful, wealthy and at the centre of a vast empire. London was expanding at extraordinary speed. Science and industry were changing the way people understood the world. Yet beneath that confidence were fears about politics, class, foreign powers and the stability of the society itself.
That tension interested me far more than the familiar image of the Victorian era.
I wasn’t looking for a world of gas lamps and gentlemen simply because it looked atmospheric.
I wanted the darkness underneath.
The world of The Hound and the Portrait is one in which respectable appearances matter enormously—and therefore provide excellent cover for secrets.
A gentleman’s reputation can be a weapon.
A house can conceal more than a room.
A conversation conducted politely can contain a threat.
And a painting can say something its owner desperately wishes it wouldn’t.
Edinburgh and London
The choice of Edinburgh and London was equally important.
Edinburgh has always struck me as a city in which the past is impossible to escape. Its architecture, its history and its darker associations give it an atmosphere that seemed perfectly suited to the beginning of the story.
London is different.
London represents power.
It is where political influence, money, intelligence and ambition converge. It is a city in which an apparently private secret can become a matter of national importance.
Moving between the two cities allowed me to create a contrast between old knowledge and modern power—and between the things people inherit and the things they are prepared to do to acquire.
Why a portrait?
I have always liked the idea of an object carrying a story long after the people connected with it are gone.
A portrait is particularly powerful because it appears to reveal something while actually concealing much more.
We look at the face.
But what about everything around it?
The room. The objects. The expression. The details that may seem insignificant until somebody knows how to interpret them.
That was the idea I wanted to explore.
The portrait in the novel isn’t simply a clue. It is a silent witness.
It has seen something.
The question is whether anyone will understand what it is saying.
And the hound
The hound came to represent something very different.
Instinct.
Persistence.
The sense that something is wrong even before you can explain why.
There is a particular kind of danger in a mystery when the protagonist knows that somebody is following a trail—but doesn’t yet know where that trail leads.
The hound became a symbol of that pursuit.
Once the truth begins to emerge, there is no easy way to stop looking.
And that, perhaps, is the real danger.
The attraction of the unknown
Historical fiction gives me the freedom to ask questions that ordinary history cannot answer.
I can take a real period, populate it with the sights, sounds, politics and attitudes of its time, and then ask:
What if?
What if an apparently insignificant painting had been connected to something much larger?
What if people in positions of influence had reasons to keep its secrets hidden?
What if someone discovered the truth more than a century later?
That is where fiction begins.
I don’t want to rewrite history.
I want to enter its shadows.
The story I wanted to tell
When I began writing The Hound and the Portrait, I wanted atmosphere, certainly. I wanted the streets of Edinburgh and London, the Victorian interiors, the sense of another age pressing in around the characters.
But atmosphere alone isn’t enough.
I wanted a mystery that would make the reader question what they were seeing.
I wanted the reader to feel that an ordinary object might not be ordinary at all.
Most of all, I wanted the past to feel dangerous.
Because the past is not always safely behind us.
Sometimes it leaves something behind.
A letter.
A name.
A painting.
A witness.
A secret.
And sometimes that secret survives because nobody has yet asked the right question.
That is what inspired The Hound and the Portrait.
It began with an image that would not leave me alone—and a simple suspicion that what appeared to be a portrait might actually be evidence.
From there, the story grew into a journey through Victorian Britain, into the world of espionage, hidden loyalties and buried truths.
And once the hunt began, I knew there could be only one question worth asking:
What is hidden in the portrait—and who will kill to keep it hidden?
