Donald Michael Platt

Donald Michael Platt writes historical fiction shaped by close attention to political conflict, cultural change, and the lives of people caught between larger forces. Close to the Sun follows fighter pilots from Britain, the United States, and Germany during the Second World War, giving several national perspectives room within one aviation narrative. Platt's earlier novels include Rocamora and House of Rocamora, connected works set in seventeenth-century Spain, as well as Bodo the Apostate, which turns to the Carolingian world. Before concentrating on novels, he wrote for television and sold scripts for programmes including Mr. Novak. That background helps explain the strong dramatic structure and shifting viewpoints in his fiction. Close to the Sun extends his historical range into twentieth-century warfare while keeping individual choices at the centre. Across his books, Platt uses documented settings not simply as scenery but as pressures that test ambition, loyalty, friendship, and survival.