Author Deborah Swift embarks on an adventure in the South China Seas to review Tom Williams’s reissued novel, The White Rajah, and finds much to enjoy. I’d never heard of James Brooke before reading Tom Williams’s excellent biographical novel, so I have been educated as well as entertained. Set at the beginning of the 19th […]
Reviews
Looking for your next read? HWA members review the best new historical writing, recommend their desert island books and revisit some old favourites.
Review: Fortune’s Soldier by Alex Rutherford
Novelist and historian Richard Hopton reviews Alex Rutherford’s latest novel, Fortune’s Soldier, for Historia. Fortune’s Soldier is Alex Rutherford’s latest Indian historical epic, a successor to the Empire of the Moghul sextet. Set in the years between 1744 and 1757, it takes on a controversial period in Indian history. For old-fashioned British imperialists it represents […]
Review: The Prophet by Martine Bailey
Martine Bailey’s latest novel The Prophet is a sequel to 2019’s The Almanack and is another beautifully crafted story balanced on the cusp of the old world and the new, writes Catherine Hokin. The Almanack took place in 1752 against a backdrop of the transition from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and the ‘lost […]
Review: The Lifeline by Deborah Swift
Tom Williams reviews The Lifeline by Deborah Swift, an adventure story with a dash of romance set in German-occupied Norway during a lesser-known episode of resistance to Nazi rule. Deborah Swift’s latest continues the Second World War theme of her latest books. We’re in German-occupied Norway in 1942. We are thrown into the action practically […]
Review: A Prince and a Spy by Rory Clements
Author Carolyn Kirby reviews A Prince and A Spy by Rory Clements, the fifth novel in his Tom Wilde series of thrillers set before and during the Second World War. When it comes to historical accuracy, Kate Atkinson says of her novel Transcription (2018) that the story was created through “…a wrenching apart of history […]
Review: Warrior by Edoardo Albert with Paul Gething
Matthew Harffy, author of the Bernicia Chronicles, is no stranger to the history of Bamburgh (once Bebbanburg) during the Anglo-Saxon period of English history. He reviews Edoardo Albert and Paul Gething’s latest book, Warrior, for Historia. The title of Warrior: A Life of War in Anglo-Saxon Britain by Edoardo Albert with Paul Gething might lead […]
Review: Fortress of Fury by Matthew Harffy
Edoardo Albert reviews Fortress of Fury, the latest book in Matthew Harffy’s much-loved Bernicia Chronicles series set in the turbulent world of seventh-century England. The many readers who have accompanied Matthew Harffy’s seventh-century warrior hero, Beobrand, through his adventures in the previous six books in the series will be expecting taut adventure, bloody and brutal […]
Review: A Cornish Betrothal by Nicola Pryce
The internationally best-selling author Nicola Cornick reviews A Cornish Betrothal, the fifth book in Nicola Pryce’s Cornish Saga series. A Cornish Betrothal by Nicola Pryce is a historical novel set in Cornwall at the turn of the 18th century (the clue is in the title!). Historical novels of this era and with this setting, particularly […]