Author Essie Fox reviews Finola Austin’s “remarkable” debut novel, Brontë’s Mistress. Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin is a literary novel created in the classic style of Victorian sensation. It also echoes certain themes from the Brontë sisters’ work. But at the centre of this novel is not some younger woman in the throes of her […]
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: A Map of the Damage by Sophia Tobin
When Historia asked acclaimed author Antonia Hodgson to review Sophia Tobin’s latest novel, there was only one problem. She’d love to do it, she said, but her copy wasn’t where she could get at it. Sophia’s publisher, like so many others during these difficult times of lockdown, was efficient and helpful and sent an ebook […]
Review: The Lost Outlaw by Paul Fraser Collard
Jack Lark has fought for the British in Crimea and India. He’s fought alongside the French Foreign Legion at the battle of Solferino and on both sides in the American Civil War. Now, though, he is facing a personal crisis. After a bullet nearly ended his life in the Civil War, does he still have […]
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 […]
Review: Art Deco by the Sea
Historian Lucy Jane Santos reviews Art Deco by the Sea, an exhibition at the University of East Anglia’s Sainsbury Centre, transferring to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle in the summer. The term Art Deco, coined in the 1960s, refers to the decorative modern style that spanned the boom of the roaring 1920s and the […]
Review: Hitler’s Secret by Rory Clements
Hitler’s Secret, the latest Tom Wilde Second World War thriller from Rory Clements, has a daring ‘what-if’ premise, as fellow WWII author Jason Hewitt finds out. For novelists, finding a fresh, exciting take on World War II is by no means easy. It is a period strewn with the footprints of many thousands of writers […]
Review: 1917
With its immersive cinematic techniques, the film 1917 conveys the relentless horror of war in a manner that is “profoundly moving”, author Elizabeth Fremantle tells Historia. Sam Mendes’s film 1917, inspired by the stories told by his grandfather of fighting in the First World War, has divided both critics and viewers. Some have deemed it […]
TV review: The Windermere Children
The Windermere Children (BBC 2, 27 January, 2020) follows the true story of a group of children, recently freed from concentration camps who, in 1945, were brought to Windermere for four months of rehabilitation under the auspices of child psychologist Oscar Friedmann (Thomas Kretschmann) and philanthropist Leonard Montefiore (Tim McInnerny). Made to be transmitted on […]