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Watching History

Like your history on stage or screen? Our team reviews film, theatre and TV drama with a historical slant.

TV review: The Crown, season 3

23 November 2019 By James Burge

The timing couldn’t be better. The Crown (season 3) returns to TV screens in a week when the Royal Family is back in the headlines and the role of its members is once again being questioned. And with Olivia Colman in the title role, playing a very different kind of queen from the one she […]

Review: The Name of the Rose: TV series

21 October 2019 By Jean Goodhind

John Turturro’s TV adaptation of The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco’s dark murder mystery set in a Benedictine abbey in 14th-century Italy, began screening on BBC2 in October, 2019. Author Jean Goodhind has read the book and seen the film; how will this version compare? The moment I saw this in my TV schedule […]

Review: Downton Abbey: the film

13 October 2019 By LJ Trafford

Does Downton Abbey work as a film? Should you take your non-DA-addict friend or partner to see it? Will there be posh frocks and implausible plots? These and many other important questions are answered in LJ Trafford’s Historia review. The world is neatly divided into those who have never seen Downton Abbey and those who […]

Review: World on Fire

4 October 2019 By Elizabeth Buchan

Screening a Second World War drama series so soon after the 80th anniversary commemorations could be a bold decision – or a predictable one. Elizabeth Buchan has watched the first episode of World on Fire (BBC One, Sundays, 9pm) and tells Historia whether the gamble has paid off. A world war with the best tourist […]

Review: D-Day: The Last Heroes

9 June 2019 By AL Berridge

Best-selling author AL Berridge reviews D-Day: The Last Heroes, shown on BBC One on Saturday, 8 June, 2019

Review: Les Miserables

3 January 2019 By Kate Griffin

Les Miserables - main characters

Everything about Les Miserables is built on an epic scale. At around 1500 pages, depending on which edition is making your bookshelf sag, Victor Hugo’s novel (published in 1862) is not only physically enormous, but also it deals with MASSIVE themes: love, obsession, redemption, justice, fate and the nature of good and evil. It’s human […]

Review: The Long Song

19 December 2018 By Laura Shepherd-Robinson

The Long Song, (BBC1, 9pm) is an adaptation of Andrea Levy’s Man Booker shortlisted novel and tells the story of July, a slave growing up on a Jamaican plantation in the dying days of slavery. The first episode takes place against the backdrop of the ‘Baptist War’, or ‘Christmas Rebellion’, a slave revolt that increased […]

Review: Death and Nightingales

2 December 2018 By Ruadh Butler

Locals will tell you that for six months of the year the lakes are in Fermanagh, and for the other six, Fermanagh is in the lakes. Rain sweeps in quickly in this small corner of Ulster. Waters rise and landscapes change. Frontiers are always on the move and borders once thought traversable can suddenly become […]

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Latest Releases

Blood’s Campaign by Angus Donald

28 November 2019

Entertaining Mr Pepys by Deborah Swift

21 November 2019

House Histories: The Secrets Behind Your Front Door by Melanie Backe-Hansen

15 November 2019

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Editor’s Picks

In search of the animals in the Great Fire of London

21 November 2019

Rubicon by HWA authors

20 July 2019

William of Orange's army arrives in England

Why the Glorious Revolution was . . . well, neither

4 November 2018

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The Historical Writers Association

Historia Magazine is published by the Historical Writers Association. We are authors, publishers and agents of historical writing, both fiction and non-fiction. For information about membership and profiles of our member authors, please visit our website.

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ISSN 2515-2254

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