Historians and writers need to be open to chance discoveries, says Eric Lee. Serendipity can be a researcher’s secret weapon, as he found while working on his latest book. When doing research for a work of history or a historical novel, we know (or should know) how to locate and use primary sources, where to […]
Down the rabbit hole – to kill Hitler
The historian Eric Lee made some surprising discoveries when he found himself going down research rabbit holes in pursuit of plots to kill Hitler. I love working in archives. Holding in one’s hand original documents written a century ago (or much longer) is the closest thing I will ever experience to time travel. (I’ve written […]
At the National Archives in Kew, the past comes alive
The historian Eric Lee, author of Night of the Bayonets: The Texel Uprising and Hitler’s Revenge, April – May 1945, looks back at – and forward to – the pleasures of research at the National Archives. One of the great advantages of writing history in the UK is being able to use the National Archives […]
Writing popular history: Three lessons learned
“Read everything you can. Get to know the place you’re writing about. Know when to stop researching and start writing,” historian and author Eric Lee recommends. “Those are three of the lessons I have learned in the last quarter century as a writer of popular history.” My first book was an oral history of the […]
The Georgian Experiment
Author Eric Lee on his thirty year quest to publish a book about Georgia’s forgotten revolution. I was born in America at the height of the Cold War, during the McCarthy era, when the word “socialist” was a term of derision. But I somehow managed to find myself on the Left (the Vietnam war may […]