Tim Richardson's route to Lisbon started the way plenty of expat stories do: redundancy in London, a leap abroad, and a slow drift towards the Portuguese capital. But what he did next is far from typical. Researching a friend's family tree, the British writer stumbled onto Nicholas Trant, a real Napoleonic-era soldier whose role in the Peninsular War had slipped out of the history books. The result is Richardson's book Forgetting Nicholas Trant, the subject of a recent Big Interview episode on the Resident Podcast with host Carl Munson.
The digging took Richardson deep into Portuguese archives that English-language historians tend to ignore. He found an 1811 biography of Trant, and later uncovered a letter spelling out how the soldier worked as a liaison with the Portuguese militia in Coimbra while the city was under French occupation. Coimbra was no backwater in the story either — it changed hands and became a key logistical and medical hub during the war, and Trant's coordination with local irregular forces helped make life difficult for the French. It is exactly the kind of detail that gets lost when a war is told mostly from the British and French perspectives.
Richardson has written the book as a hybrid: accessible history threaded with historical fiction. He cuts between Trant's life and the recurring dreams of Trant's great-great-great-grandson, a device that connects the two timelines and, he argues, helps explain how and why such a significant figure simply vanished from mainstream accounts. The podcast conversation also touched on a possible screen adaptation, a run of upcoming talks and events, and Richardson's work with The British Historical Society of Portugal, which supports local volunteer history projects.
Why should a traveller care? Because the Peninsular War is written into the cities you actually visit in Portugal. Coimbra — a university town an hour south of Porto — still carries the scars and stories of the French occupation, and Lisbon's fortifications and British connections are everywhere once you know what to look for. Richardson's book and the Society's events give visitors a ready-made narrative to hang a trip on. History-minded travellers to Coimbra can pair the battlefield-era sites with the Joanina Library and the old university quarter, and Lisbon's English-language heritage talks are a low-effort way in for anyone curious about the two countries' long entanglement.
It is also a nice reminder of how expat life can turn into something bigger. A redundancy, a move to Lisbon, and one family-history favour produced a book that puts a Portuguese militia story back on the map. If a screen adaptation happens, expect Coimbra's historic streets to get a lot more camera time. Until then, the talks and events Richardson has lined up are the way to hear the story from the person who dug it out of the archives.
The full conversation is available on the Resident Podcast.
