Welcome to the Official Website of Nigel Collett
The Dream of Magnus Maximus follows the family of the usurping Emperor Magnus Maximus and his British wife, Elen, in a tale of Britain’s emergence from Roman rule.
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In AD 386, Britain stands on the brink of transformation. The familiar rhythms of life are crumbling as imperial control wanes. Struggles for independence clash with the might of the empire, while old pagan beliefs confront the rising tide of Christianity — testing loyalties to kin and country alike.
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As the Roman world fades, a dangerous new age is born. With it comes turmoil that threatens to engulf Britannia.
Can Magnus Maximus claim his dream of empire? And if he does, will Elen’s Christian faith help shape the future — or will the cost be too great for them both?
Nigel explains: “I studied the period as an undergraduate and was struck by the fact that the British side of the post Roman era was relegated to legend and largely ignored, whilst the Anglo-Saxon and archaeological records predominated. I decided to even the balance by writing a fictional account, but one as closely tied to the extant historical record and the earliest legends as possible. I want to give the British, the Welsh, a voice that is largely missing. My inspiration was Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Sword at Sunset, but view the period in a much more optimistic light, that of the seizure by the British of the chance of independence from Rome and freedom from foreign conquest, and the resulting creation of a polity that survived for a century and a half.”
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About Nigel Collett
I am an English writer and an ex-British Army Officer who lived for many years in Hong Kong, where I still conduct business, mostly for and with the resident Nepalese community through our Company, Gurkha International (Hong Kong) Ltd. We use the city as a base to pursue our dream of opening employment in the international maritime industry to the people of Nepal. Through British Gurkha Overseas Services, our sister company in Kathmandu, our Company, Gurkha International Manpower Services Ltd, recruits Nepalese men and women as crew on board cruise liners worldwide.
My writing includes seven published books as well as a series of articles and reviews for the Asian Review of Books, the Hong Kong edition of China Daily, the LGBT+ community site Fridae.asia and other journals. In London, I am a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a member of the Oriental Club.
Writing, specifically being co-founder and Coordinator of Hong Kong's Tongzhi Literary Group, brought me to activism, and I was for many years the Secretary of Hong Kong's Pink Alliance (the Tongzhi Community Joint Meeting) from 2008. I am the compiler of the LGBT World History (a chronology from the 27th Century BCE to today) that is housed on the Pink Alliance website.
Annually, I had the great pleasure of moderating sessions for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival for many years after 2006.
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​My book, A Death in Hong Kong, was published by City University Press in March 2018, and had the great good fortune to win the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong's 2017 Hong Kong History Book Prize. You can find details of this on its own page.
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Developing the Heart; E.M. Foster and India, was also published by City University Press, in 2022.
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My latest book, The Dream of Magnus Maximus, published by the Book Guild will be available on 28 November 2025.
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If you want to know more about my other writing, Journalism, Interviews, Hong Kong Literary Festival.
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