Elisabeth Gifford writes about the link between Scottish whalers and the Inuit people living on the Arctic Atlantic coasts, which is a major theme in her latest book, A Woman Made of Snow. The Arctic Bar in Dundee is an unprepossessing pub with a modern frontage, but inside the dusty harpoon guns and photographs of […]
Should historical authors feel guilt when they write real people as antiheroes?
What responsibility has an author of historical fiction towards real people who they write as antiheroes in a novel? Should authors feel guilty about how they portray them? AJ West, whose debut novel, The Spirit Engineer, takes people who have living descendants as its close inspiration, considers this dilemma. I don’t believe in ghosts, though […]
The HWA Crown Awards shortlists 2021
The 2021 HWA Crown Awards shortlists are out! We’re delighted to announce the 18 outstanding books which have gone forward for consideration for this year’s Crown Awards, with six books in each of the three categories: HWA Gold Crown, HWA Non-fiction Crown and HWA Debut Crown. HWA Gold Crown shortlist 2021 V For Victory by […]
The HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition 2021 shortlist and winner
The HWA and the Dorothy Dunnett Society are delighted to announce the shortlist and winner for the 2021 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition! Six stories were shortlisted and the winner and highly commended entries were selected from these. Winner His Mother’s Quilt by Naomi Kelsey A gothic gem. A woman trapped in bed fights the […]
The politics of Tutankhamun’s tomb
Nearly a century after the excavations at Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, we are coming to regard the finders, keepers attitude towards ancient objects in countries other than our own as (at least) problematic. No such hesitation troubled Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter at the time, though the discovery would […]
Sex in Ancient Rome
Sexual activity in Ancient Rome wasn’t the licentious free-for-all we may imagine (especially for women); in fact it was strictly regulated. But author and historian LJ Trafford has unearthed plenty of weird and lurid facts about Ancient Roman sex for her new book, as she tells Historia. When my publisher suggested to me that I […]
The wizards of west Wales
In 19th-century Wales, when medical cures were hit-or-miss, people were just as likely to go to one of the cunning folk as to a qualified doctor. Alis Hawkins, whose new book, Not One Of Us, features one such astrologer and healer, writes about the real wizards of west Wales. One of the reasons I love […]
The Partisan, socialist cafe and creative centre
Mary Chamberlain writes about the Partisan Coffee House, the socialist cafe which, in its four-year existence, became a creative centre which transformed the political, intellectual and cultural scene in the 1960s. At a time when espresso bars were the rage, and a new, young clientele had cash to spare, the Partisan Coffee House opened its […]