After surviving a raid in Ukraine, war photographer Tash Carter is in desperate need of recuperation. She accepts a job teaching photography at Belford Abbey, a luxurious estate where the super-rich come to switch off and rejuvenate. One of Belford’s most esteemed clients is billionaire Eliot Drake, owner of Panopticon, a data-mining company which could […]
How I wrote a historical heist
How do you write a historical heist? The ingredients, TL Mogford decided, were the same in all periods: target, tech and team. But it was while he was working in an Italian kitchen that he found the spark that led to his latest novel: the fact that saffron is worth its weight in gold. And […]
The Mysterious Poisoning of Charles Bravo by Angela Buckley
In April 1876, Charles Bravo, a young London barrister, died in agony at his Balham home after ingesting a lethal dose of antimony. His death shocked Victorian society and set in motion one of the most baffling and sensational investigations of the 19th century. Despite two lengthy inquests, the question of who poisoned Charles Bravo […]
Agatha Christie and the unsolved murder of Charles Bravo
Which unsolved murder fascinated Agatha Christie so much that she decided to investigate it herself? Angela Buckley writes about the 1876 poisoning of Charles Bravo, also known as the Balham Mystery, still unsolved after 150 years. In Agatha Christie’s Ordeal by Innocence, while Dr MacMaster is trying to prove the wrongful conviction of Jack Argyle […]
Book theft in Nazi-occupied Paris
Chris Lloyd, author of the Occupation series of crime novels about Nazi-occupied Paris, argues that the widescale looting of books, now largely forgotten, was more sinister and insidious that the famous book-burnings of the 1930s. Because it wasn’t done for display; it was for a calculated culture war. “You don’t have to burn books to […]
16th-century Seville: Spain’s criminal capital
Seville in the 16th century was a city of wealth, the arts and international trade. But, says Matthew Carr, author of The Emperor of Seville, it was also Spain’s criminal capital, winning the nickname of the Great Babylon. He tells Historia how Seville embodied the paradox at the heart of Spain’s Golden Age. History tends […]
The ‘ordinary’ Victorian murderess
Victorian women who killed have fascinated writers for over a century. What made the ‘angel in the house’ — a popular idea in the late 1850s — behave like a devil? Especially if they seemed, well, ordinary. Lesley McDowell, author of Love and Other Poisons, wonders what an ‘ordinary’ murderess was. “[She was] an ordinary, […]
The Second World War crime boom
For criminals, 1939 to 1945 were “the golden years”, as a crime boom swept Britain, The blackout and the black market that rationing encouraged were a gift to them. Mark Ellis explains why law-breaking rose by 60 per cent during the Second World War. I am the author of a series of crime thrillers featuring […]