In the first of our interviews with authors shortlisted for the 2021 HWA Crown Awards, Historia talks to Ellen Alpsten, whose novel, Tsarina, is in the running for a Debut Crown Award. It retells the ‘ultimate Cinderella’ story of the tumultuous rise of a peasant girl, Marta Helena Skowrońska, who became first the wife of […]
A Beautiful Spy by Rachel Hore
It all began in the summer of 1928… Minnie is supposed to find a nice man, get married and have children. The problem is it doesn’t appeal to her at all. She is working as a secretary, but longs to make a difference. Then, one day, she gets her chance. She is recruited by the […]
Did radicals and reactionaries unite against Tsar Alexander II?
Did the radicals plotting to murder Alexander II and the reactionaries who thought his reforms went too far join forces to get rid of the Tsar? RN Morris explores an unlikely alliance that provides the political backdrop to his latest historical crime mystery, Law of Blood. In his excellent biography of Tsar Alexander II (1818-1881), […]
When Queen Victoria was Empress Alexandra’s interfering granny
Biographer Melanie Clegg tells Historia about the close relationship between Queen Victoria and Alix of Hesse, which included Victoria’s meddling in her granddaughter’s marriage plans. Two strong-willed women; who would win? As, like many other biographers, I am fundamentally nosy at heart and love nothing more than having a good old pry into other people’s […]
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 […]
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 […]
Historia Interviews: Daniel Beer
Historian Daniel Beer on Russian history, the joys of archival research and his Non-Fiction Crown shortlisted book, The House of the Dead. The HWA Non-fiction Crown celebrates the best in historical non-fiction writing. Have you always been interested in history? Yes, I have, but I came to Russian history in particular through my interest in […]