Chris Lloyd won the HWA Gold Crown Award in 2021 for The Unwanted Dead, a tense thriller set in Paris at the start of the Nazi occupation in 1940. Detective Eddie Giral, still traumatised by his experiences during the First World War, is helpless in the face of this menace. There’s one thing he still […]
Christmas reading 2021 – the best historical books
We asked eight authors to each recommend a historical book they’d love to receive for Christmas 2021, and one they would give as a Christmas gift. They include many of the best books published this year. We hope these suggestions inspire you, whether you’re looking for ideas for presents or planning to curl up in […]
How WWI veterans saved Britain’s treasures in WWII
Caroline Shenton, author of National Treasures, tells how veterans of the First World War stepped out of its ‘Long Shadow’ to help save Britain’s art collections during the Second World War. My latest book, National Treasures. Saving the Nation’s Art in World War Two, tells the true story of the adventures of our national collections […]
National Treasures by Caroline Shenton
As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London’s museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation’s highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely […]
The Ambassador by Susan Ronald
On February 18, 1938, Joseph P Kennedy was sworn in as US Ambassador to the Court of St. James. To say his appointment to the most prestigious and strategic diplomatic post in the world shocked the Establishment was an understatement: known for his profound Irish roots and staunch Catholicism, not to mention his ‘plain-spoken’ opinions […]
Resistance by Mara Timon
It’s May, 1944. When spy Elisabeth de Mornay, code name Cécile, notices a coded transmission from an agent in the field does not bear his usual signature, she suspects his cover has been blown – something that is happening with increasing frequency. With the situation in occupied France worsening and growing fears that the Resistance […]
The women agents behind the D-Day invasion
The Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June, 1944 – D-Day – is one of the most recognisable events of the Second World War, thanks not just to its importance militarily but to its coverage in books and films. Less well known is the complex and secret process of planning the invasion, and the significant […]
Review: The Forgotten by Mary Chamberlain
Sarah Day reviews Mary Chamberlain’s new novel, The Forgotten, a “compelling mystery” set in Berlin in 1945 and London in the late 1950s. Most of us encounter the history of the Second World War at some point in the school curriculum. I remember learning about the rise of Nazism, the horrors of the Holocaust, the […]