Miranda Malins, author of The Puritan Princess, writes for Historia about the extraordinary life of Oliver Cromwell’s youngest daughter, Frances, and how we need to forget everything we thought we knew about the Lord Protector’s rule. The caricature of Oliver Cromwell’s protectorate is that it was a joyless, masculine, military dictatorship presided over by a […]
The Scottish Radical Rising of 1820
Two hundred years ago, a wave of political protest swept through Central Scotland and Ayrshire, part of unrest throughout Britain following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Maggie Craig is the author of a new history of the events, One Week In April: The Scottish Radical Rising of 1820. By 1820, living and working conditions […]
The Victorian theatrical world of mystery and illusion
With the closure of our theatres, it only seems fair to bring a little old-fashioned footlights-and-greasepaint magic to Historia. So, ladies and gentlemen, I present for your especial enjoyment… the effervescent, the estimable, the essential Essie Fox! There has been quite an upsurge in Victorian-era novels published over the past few years. As a writer […]
Maria: the African woman who sailed with Drake on the Golden Hind
Nikki Marmery, the author of On Wilder Seas, was inspired by a throwaway line in a 16th-century manuscript to resurrect the hidden life of an African woman taken on board the Golden Hind as spoils of – if not war, then piracy. She tells Historia how she reconstructed Maria’s life. On Wilder Seas is the […]
HWA/Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award 2020 – the winner!
We’re delighted to announce the winner of the first HWA/Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award. She’s Maggie Richell Davies, whose gripping story, The Servant, came first in a very strong field. Once again the judges wish to stress how impressive the submissions were and how hard it was to come to a final decision. Many congratulations […]
Watercolour research: a historical writer’s technique
For Jean Moran, author of Tears of the Dragon and Summer of the Three Pagodas, research is a thing to be applied lightly, like watercolour, not thickly, like oil paint, as she tells Historia. The titles I wrote as Lizzie Lane centred on the early 20th century, and World War Two in particular, and as […]
Two strands of lost history from Scotland
Elisabeth Gifford weaves together two strands of ‘lost’ Scottish history – the last days of the inhabitants of Hirta (St Kilda) and the men of the 51st Highland Division who were left behind in France after Dunkirk – into a richly-textured story of lost love and hope, The Lost Lights of St Kilda. She tells […]
Review: The Dragon Lady by Louisa Treger
Author SD Sykes reviews The Dragon Lady, the latest novel by Louisa Treger, and finds it a “beautifully written, absorbing book”. I love novels that find a little-known thread of history, and then pull it out to give us a new and unexpected insight into the past. This is exactly what Louisa Treger has achieved […]