About

Stephen D Owen

A Lifelong Passion for History and Storytelling

I’m Stephen Owen — writing under the pen name Stephen D Owen — living in Bristol, in the heart of England’s West Country. Roman Britain and the ancient world have captivated me since childhood, long before I ever thought I’d write a novel about them.

Buy The Book

From Fascination to Fiction

My interest in this period began early, fuelled by school trips, museum visits, and a growing fascination with a Britain that existed long before castles and kings — a Britain of tribes, druids, and a queen who dared to fight back against the might of Rome. College studies in creative writing, along with years of writing articles for the local press, slowly sharpened the craft, and the ambition to one day write a novel of my own.

That ambition found its subject on 1 August 1984, when peat cutters at Lindow Moss in Cheshire uncovered a perfectly preserved Iron Age body — Lindow Man. Some experts speculated he may have been a druid priest, sacrificed around the time of the Iceni revolt against Rome. That discovery became the seed of an idea that would grow, slowly, into Arminus — a central character in Iceni: The Year of Sacrifice, and a figure close to Boudica herself.

Seven Years in the Making

What followed was seven years of research, writing, and rewriting: daily word counts, characters who grew and changed with every draft, and the particular discipline of losing yourself in another world while still showing up for everyday life. Iceni: The Year of Sacrifice was published by The Book Guild on 28 January 2025 — the first instalment of a planned trilogy telling the story of Queen Boudica, the druid priests, and the Iceni revolt against Roman rule.

Book Two, Iceni Rising, has already been accepted for publication. Book Three, Boudica’s Fate, is currently in progress — and a further, loosely connected story set in Roman Britain more than a century later is already taking shape in draft.

Alongside writing, I work as a freelance wedding and events photographer based in Bristol — a craft that, like historical fiction, is really about capturing a moment before it disappears.