Imagine you were transported back in time to Ancient Rome and you had to start a new life there. How would you fit in? Where would you live? What would you eat? Where would you go to have your hair done? Who would you go to if you got ill, or if you were mugged […]
Gladiator sweat and leech hair dye; how to survive in Ancient Rome
When Pen & Sword Books approached historian and novelist LJ Trafford about writing a book they described as ‘Horrible Histories for Grownups’, set in Ancient Rome, she accepted with pleasure. As readers of her books – and her Historia pieces – know, she’s an expert in the bizarre, ridiculous and downright disgusting details of Roman […]
Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom by Annie Whitehead
Many people know about Wessex, the ‘Last Kingdom’ of the Anglo‑Saxons to fall to the Northmen, but another kingdom, Mercia, once enjoyed supremacy over not only Wessex, but all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. At its zenith Mercia controlled what is now Birmingham and London ‒ and the political, commercial paramountcy of the two today finds […]
HWA Crown Awards 2020: the shortlists
The 2020 HWA Crown Awards shortlists are announced, with 18 outstanding books in three categories: Gold Crown, Non-fiction Crown and Debut Crown. The judges on all three panels found it hard to choose from the longlisted books; nevertheless their shortlists represent the breadth – and depth – of recent historical writing. Congratulations from all at […]
The Templars and the reconquest of Spain
SJA Turney’s Knights Templar books follow the adventures of Arnau de Vallbona as he travels across Europe to fulfil his duties as a new knight of the Temple. Simon tells Historia about the background to his latest book, The Crescent and the Cross. This is the fifth and penultimate book in a series in which […]
Prisoners of History: What Monuments Tell Us About Our History and Ourselves by Keith Lowe
What happens when our values change, but what we have set in stone does not? Humankind has always had the urge to memorialise, to make physical testaments to the past. There’s just one problem: when we carve a statue or put up a monument, it can wind up holding us hostage to bad history. In […]
Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium by Lucy Jane Santos
Of all the radioactive elements discovered at the end of the 19th century, it was radium that became the focus of both public fascination and entrepreneurial zeal. Half Lives tells the fascinating, curious, sometimes macabre story of the element through its ascendance as a desirable item – a present for a queen, a prize in […]
Anglo-Saxon women with power and influence
Annie Whitehead, historian and novelist, writes about the women who had power and influence in Anglo-Saxon England. Pre-Conquest women are rarely written about, so for my new book, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England, I decided to track them down and tell their stories. The original plan was to categorise them – queens, abbesses, witches, […]