1942, Nazi-occupied Norway. Schoolteacher Astrid Dahl has always kept out of trouble. But when she is told to teach the fascist Nazi curriculum, she refuses and starts a teachers’ rebellion, persuading 8,000 teachers to go on strike. The Germans arrest her, and terrified of what punishment her trial might bring, she is forced to go […]
A different kind of WWII resistance
There were many ways to resist the Nazi regime. Deborah Swift tells Historia about a quiet, but very effective, form of resistance which she came across while researching her new book, The Lifeline, set in Norway and Shetland during the Second World War. I’ve always been interested in the French Resistance, but when I was […]
“Put those Christmas lights out!” The Home Front during World War Two
Jean Fullerton’s novels draw on the history of her native East End of London. Her Ration Book series, set during the Second World War, vividly describes Christmas at a time when cupboards were, if not bare, not stocked with treats, either. She tells Historia what wartime Christmases were like. For centuries Christmas has been a […]
A Ration Book Christmas Kiss by Jean Fullerton
When the local girls’ school gets bombed out in December of 1942, Michael Brogan and his friends are forced to share classes with the young ladies of Stepney Green. And when Michael meets Jane in one of those lessons, he knows it’s the best thing that has ever happened to him. He may only be […]
Historia interviews: Clare Mulley and Carolyn Kirby
The biographer Clare Mulley has been in the news recently for her success in obtaining an English Heritage blue plaque to commemorate wartime SOE agent Krystyna Skarbek, also known as Christine Granville, who was said to be ‘Churchill’s favourite spy.’ Krystyna was the subject of Clare’s bestselling 2012 biography The Spy Who Loved and Clare […]
The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford
Chrissie Gillies comes from the last ever community to live on the beautiful, isolated Scottish island of St Kilda. Evacuated in 1930, she will never forget her life there, nor the man she loved and lost who visited one fateful summer a few years before. Fred Lawson has been captured, beaten and imprisoned in Nazi-controlled […]
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 […]
Tell Me How It Ends by VB Grey
Delia Maxwell is an international singing sensation, an icon of 1950s glamour who is still riding high on the new 60s scene, adored by millions. All men want to be with her, all women want to be her. But one woman wants it maybe a little too much… Lily Brooks has watched Delia all her […]