The Coffin Path is a seventeenth-century ghost story. A story in which the oppression and wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors provides a compelling backdrop, where a sense of encroaching malevolence seeps like a ‘winding sheet of fog … silent, still, watching’ through the very stones of Scarcross Hall, and the fates of all who live there. Scarcross […]
Reviews
Looking for your next read? HWA members review the best new historical writing, recommend their desert island books and revisit some old favourites.
The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford
Elizabeth Gifford’s debut novel, Secrets of the Sea House, was a sweeping, beautiful work, imbued with myth and mystery; it was shortlisted for the HWA Debut Crown award in 2014 and was one of my personal favourites that year. Gifford is a talented writer with the ability to create satisfying stories and haunting atmosphere from […]
Review: Britannia, Episode 1
We’ve all been waiting to devour Britannia, we history buffs, just as the Romans did nearly 2000 years ago. Where Julius Caesar turned and ran, Aulus Plautius returns, nine decades later, in AD 43, brimming with bravado. ‘I am lucky,’ he tells his second-in-command, the wonderfully named Perfectus, vowing to succeed where Caesar had failed. […]
Review: Alias Grace – the Book, the Woman and the Mini Series
Anna Mazzola reviews Netflix’s new adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace. When she was 17, actor Sarah Polley wrote to Margaret Atwood asking her for the movie rights to Alias Grace. That was pretty ballsy. I also read Alias Grace when I was about 17. I then read it another four times over the following […]
Review: Peaky Blinders, Season 4, Episode 1
‘We’re going back … back to Small Heath,’ says a blood-spattered Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy), in the opening episode of Peaky Blinders, Season 4. ‘Back where you belong,’ replies Johnny Dogs (Packy Lee) – he knows, as do we, that Tommy can’t escape his roots. Season 3 of Peaky Blinders was about Tommy’s attempt to […]
Review: Gunpowder
Gunpowder (Episode 1/3, BBC One, 21/10/2017) follows the motivation and execution of an act of terrorism. I am aware that the use of that word is both anachronistic and subject to technical objections so I will clarify by saying that it is an example of violent action by individuals against executives of the state. We […]
Pleasing Mr Pepys by Deborah Swift
Deb Willet, companion to Elizabeth, the wife of Samuel Pepys, takes centre stage in this intriguing tale of love, espionage and murder in Restoration London. Deb takes the position in Pepys’ household in order to escape from the tyranny of sour-faced Aunt Beth. Deb’s father is in Ireland about his business affairs; her mother deserted […]
The Zealot’s Bones by D.M. Mark
On August 10th, 1849, a vicious form of Asiatic cholera (which would ravage all parts of Britain) made its appearance in Hull. This terrible scourge devastated the city for three months and killed 1,860 – a rate of one in 43 of the population. D.M. Mark uses this grim year in the City of Culture’s […]