I was standing on a wet, grey mountainside in Iran staring up at something almost out of my eye's reach. Suddenly it hit me just how astonishing this place was - a rock carving 2,500 years old that had survived invasions, vandalism and the weather, and still had the power to draw people like me thousands of kilometres from home to see it. The Bisitun Inscription tells the story of how Darius the Great became King of Kings of the ancient Persian Empire. Nearly 200 years before me, another eccentric Englishman, Sir Henry Rawlinson, had suspended himself precariously on a rope contraption high up on the same mountainside,  to copy and later decipher the inscription. Amazingly, the story he discovered fitted in its important details with that told by Herodotus in his Histories - also written 2,500 years ago. It was these two great ancient artefacts - the Bisitun inscription and Herodotus' Histories - which inspired me to write Blood of Kings. The Histories is full of amazing historical tales, which explains why people still love to read it after thousands of years. I wondered why no one had ever turned some of these marvellous tales into a novel. And so I decided to try....  I gave up my career at the English Bar and went to live in an oasis on the border between Libya and Egypt. I chose this spot as it was central to the story Darius had to tell. I stayed there for over 3 years, researching and writing my first novel, Blood of Kings. Set in Ancient Persia an d Egypt, it tells the story of Darius's rise to power.