The internationally best-selling author Nicola Cornick reviews A Cornish Betrothal, the fifth book in Nicola Pryce’s Cornish Saga series. A Cornish Betrothal by Nicola Pryce is a historical novel set in Cornwall at the turn of the 18th century (the clue is in the title!). Historical novels of this era and with this setting, particularly […]
Review: The Lost Outlaw by Paul Fraser Collard
Jack Lark has fought for the British in Crimea and India. He’s fought alongside the French Foreign Legion at the battle of Solferino and on both sides in the American Civil War. Now, though, he is facing a personal crisis. After a bullet nearly ended his life in the Civil War, does he still have […]
Review: Art Deco by the Sea
Historian Lucy Jane Santos reviews Art Deco by the Sea, an exhibition at the University of East Anglia’s Sainsbury Centre, transferring to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle in the summer. The term Art Deco, coined in the 1960s, refers to the decorative modern style that spanned the boom of the roaring 1920s and the […]
Troy: an ancient story for a modern age
Emily Hauser, classicist and author, reviews the British Museum’s Troy: Myth and Reality exhibition for Historia. It seems that the story of the Trojan War is capturing our imaginations now more than ever before. The past few years has seen an explosion in the numbers of reworkings of the Trojan War myth. My own debut […]
Unforgettable legacies of the East India Company
Historian William Dalrymple’s profile is high at the moment, with an acclaimed book about the East India Company published recently and an exhibition he curated opening this month. We’re delighted that Vayu Naidu has interviewed him for Historia and writes here about Dalrymple’s wide vision, as shown by his writing and his selection of paintings. […]
Eat, drink, and be merry the Pompeian way
Historian Lindsay Powell reports on an exhibition in Oxford which shows, through images and objects from Pompeii, the variety of the Roman diet and the places associated with its preparation and consumption, from filthy kitchens to elaborate banquets. “Vivamus, moriendum est” – “let us live, for we must die” – the effusive Vibius Gallus is recorded […]
Review: The Almanack by Martine Bailey
“She thought of time as like a ribbon unspooling; the present moment was the only inch of the stuff you could grasp as it cascaded past you, framed by the diamond buckle of now.” I shall confess to two things from the start of this review: a love of Martine Bailey’s previous books and a […]
Review: Emily Brontë Reappraised by Claire O’Callaghan
On the bicentenary of Emily Brontë’s birth, Katherine Clements reviews a new ‘biography with a twist’. Emily, the elusive Brontë sister, is often portrayed as antisocial, difficult, perhaps even slightly unhinged. Two centuries of Brontë scholarship have created an inscrutable image of this singular woman; Emily as enigma has become integral to Brontë myth making. […]