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Review: 1917

28 January 2020 By Elizabeth Fremantle

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 […]

Review: Downton Abbey: the film

13 October 2019 By LJ Trafford

Does Downton Abbey work as a film? Should you take your non-DA-addict friend or partner to see it? Will there be posh frocks and implausible plots? These and many other important questions are answered in LJ Trafford’s Historia review. The world is neatly divided into those who have never seen Downton Abbey and those who […]

Review: The Favourite

9 January 2019 By Imogen Hermes Gowar

If the release of a new period drama isn’t accompanied by a debate about its historical accuracy, is it even a period drama?

The bones of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite are entirely factual – Queen Anne really did have a female ‘favourite’, Sarah Churchill, Lady Marlborough

Review: They Shall Not Grow Old

16 November 2018 By AL Berridge

They Shall Not Grow Old titles

At first it seems a strange title. “They shall grow not old” is from Laurence Binyon’s epitaph on The Fallen of World War I, but the emphasis in Peter Jackson’s masterly film is firmly on those who survived it: the men who enlisted and went out to France, but lived and came home to tell […]

Review: Outlaw King

15 November 2018 By Catherine Hokin

Cast of Outlaw King riding through Glencoe

Netflix’s latest foray into original drama shines a spotlight on three crucial years (1304-1307) in the life of Robert the Bruce, the king who would eventually win independence for Scotland at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. We first meet Bruce two years before his 1306 coronation as he surrenders to King Edward I at […]

Review: The Little Stranger

10 October 2018 By Jason Hewitt

The Little Stranger

1947. A young Doctor Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) visits the ramshackle Hundreds Hall to attend to a servant girl who is claiming to be ill. However, strange things are afoot and Faraday soon becomes embroiled in the closed off world of the Ayres family that live there: the stern-faced matriarch; Roderick, a disfigured war veteran; and […]

Review: Victoria and Abdul

19 September 2017 By James Burge

Victoria and Abdul (dir: Stephen Frears) is the latest example of an established genre of films which has developed the trick of holding up a mirror to the British as a people, seeing a certain amount of ugliness but then managing to come up smelling of roses. The ugliness we see is usually something along […]

The Beguiled

17 July 2017 By Katherine Clements

The Beguiled is Sofia Coppola’s take on the 1966 novel by Thomas P. Cullinan, and an earlier film adaptation by Don Siegal, starring Clint Eastwood. Coppola has a history of exploring female sexuality and power in works like The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette. Now she adds another clever and complex study – one with […]

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The Mystery of the Hawke Sapphires by JC Briggs

26 January 2021

Shake Loose the Border by Robert Low

25 January 2021

The Straits of Treachery by Richard Hopton

21 January 2021

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Editor’s Picks

Concentration camps and the politics of memory

26 May 2020

An appearance of serenity: the French fashion industry in WWII

16 April 2019

Entrance to Auschwitz

Torn from home

27 January 2019

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Historia Magazine is published by the Historical Writers’ Association. We are authors, publishers and agents of historical writing, both fiction and non-fiction. For information about membership and profiles of our member authors, please visit our website.

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ISSN 2515-2254

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