Biographer Melanie Clegg tells Historia about the close relationship between Queen Victoria and Alix of Hesse, which included Victoria’s meddling in her granddaughter’s marriage plans. Two strong-willed women; who would win? As, like many other biographers, I am fundamentally nosy at heart and love nothing more than having a good old pry into other people’s […]
Burke in the Peninsula by Tom Williams
Things getting a bit messy in Spain. Lots of irregulars. Civilians joining in the fighting. That sort of thing. Wellesley needs all the help he can get. They need a man who can pass for a Spaniard. Someone who can make himself useful with the irregulars. Someone who is prepared to fight dirty if it […]
Those Who Know by Alis Hawkins
Harry Probert-Lloyd has inherited the estate of Glanteifi and appointed his assistant John as under-steward. But his true vocation, to be coroner, is under threat. Against his natural instincts, Harry must campaign if he is to be voted as coroner permanently by the local people and politicking is not his strength. On the hustings, Harry […]
The Unwanted Suitor: a short story (part two)
This is the second and final part of Historia’s serialisation of Sophia Tobin’s The Unwanted Suitor, taken from Victoriana, the HWA collection of ten short stories set in the 19th century, each one accompanied by an interview with the author. In the first part, the narrator, a vicar living on the East Anglia coast, marries […]
The Unwanted Suitor: a short story
This is the first part of Historia’s exclusive extract from the latest HWA short story collection, Victoriana. With a gothic undercurrent and a satisfying twist at the end, The Unwanted Suitor by Sophia Tobin is set on the East Kent coast in the mid-19th century. Some tales are harder to tell than others. I tell […]
Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin
Yorkshire, 1843. Lydia Robinson, mistress of Thorp Green Hall, has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something […]
The Dance of the Serpents by Oscar de Muriel
There are many bad days in Edinburgh police’s subdivision ‘The Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly’. And in the pantheon of the worst days, today takes the podium. Because the English Inspector Ian Frey, and his Scottish boss ‘Nine-Nails’ McGray are called into a meeting in the […]
Fugitive by Paul Fraser Collard
Roguish hero Jack Lark – soldier, leader, imposter – crosses borders once more as he pursues a brand-new adventure in Africa. London, 1868. Jack has traded the battlefield for business, running a thriving club in the backstreets of Whitechapel. But this underworld has rules and when Jack refuses to comply, he finds himself up against […]