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The curiosities of history

21 May 2019 By Robert Wilton

How much research do I need to do? It’s a familiar question for writers of historical fiction. But author Robert Wilton has a confession…

The HWA and Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award: interview with Richard Foreman

28 March 2019 By Editor

Historia talks to Richard Foreman about about the HWA and Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award

How I became a historical fiction writer (I think)

25 March 2019 By Gill Thompson

Orphan children saying goodbye

Gill Thompson tells Historia how she became a historical fiction author…
much to her surprise

Writing popular history: Three lessons learned

6 December 2018 By Eric Lee

Sark

Read everything you can. Get to know the place you’re writing about. Know when to stop researching and start writing. Those are three of the lessons I have learned in the last quarter century as a writer of popular history. My first book was an oral history of the Vietnam war based on interviews with […]

What counts as historical fiction?

29 September 2018 By Emma Darwin

Painting by Vermeer of a woman writing

Our resident agony aunt, Dr Darwin, answers a common question: what counts as historical fiction? Dear Dr Darwin, I told my grandmother that I was writing a historical novel set in the Liverpool of the early Beatles, and she laughed so hard she nearly fell off her motorbike. I told my brother the Beatles weren’t […]

In Search of Mercia

11 September 2018 By Annie Whitehead

Annie Whitehead on research roadblocks, and writing history when the evidence is elusive.  I spend my life writing about the characters who inhabited ancient Mercia. The history of this Anglo-Saxon kingdom is full of colourful characters, some familiar – Lady Godiva and Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians – and some not so well-known, but no […]

Why Historical Fiction?

13 July 2018 By Andrew Martin

Novelist Andrew Martin considers why he’s drawn to writing historical fiction. I have written fourteen novels, most of them wholly or partly historical. (I say ‘wholly or partly’ because my latest, The Martian Girl, is set both in the modern day and 1898.) I am happy to identify as a historical novelist. It seems a logical […]

The Widow with the Lamp

25 October 2017 By Liz Macrae Shaw

Liz Macrae Shaw tells how a tragic family tale inspired a novel. The human brain is a story-seeking missile. From early childhood we search out stories, starting with our own personal ones. That’s why programmes about genealogy such as Who Do You Think You Are? have such an appeal and why family history is a […]

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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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  • Reviews: Entertaining Mr Pepys by Deborah Swift

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