Katherine Clements picks the best costume drama to watch over the festive season. The Crown (Netflix, from 8th December) When The Crown first aired last year it was much hyped as the most expensive TV series ever made. I doubted whether a show about our current royals would live up to such grand claims. I was […]
From Disturbing to Disney: the Strange Tale of the Nutcracker
Catherine Hokin investigates the history of festive favourite, The Nutcracker ballet. A deeply creepy inventor ‘uncle’, a seven-headed mouse, a little girl who tears her arm open on broken glass and a curse which traps first a queen and then a boy inside the misshapen body of a giant nutcracker: what better story to entertain your […]
HWA’s Christmas Reads
We asked members of the Historical Writers’ Association which books were on their Christmas list, and which they were giving to others. The results include some sparkling fiction and non-fiction, from prize-winning novels to hidden gems. Manda Scott Every year something jumps out of the TBR pile and makes itself noticed so that I remember it […]