Vampires in Venice? In her new Gothic thriller, Dangerous, Essie Fox imagines what could happen if fiction appears to become fatal fact when Lord Byron is living in the water-bound city. Here she writes about the two incidents from Byron’s life that inspired her novel. Most of us know of Bram Stoker‘s Dracula, published in […]
Dr Kahn and the Victorians’ fascination with anatomy
Essie Fox writes about the Victorian obsession with human anatomy — often as grotesques — and the bizarre tale of one museum owner whose success resisted scandals and attempts to close his establishment for years. It’s part of the background to The Fascination, her latest book. My new novel, The Fascination, is a Victorian gothic […]
Review: The Last Kingdom – Seven Kings Must Die
Essie Fox reviews the last TV screen appearance of Uhtred of Bebbanburg in Seven Kings Must Die, the final episode of the long-running The Last Kingdom series. She finds much to admire. Seven Kings Must Die is the one-off Netflix film that finally concludes the historical TV series, The Last Kingdom. These enthralling screen adaptions […]
Review: The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola
Essie Fox reviews a new historical crime mystery set in 18th-century Paris which ranges from the slums of Paris to the glittering halls of Versailles and takes in true crime, ingenious inventions, Enlightenment philosophy and the journey of three young women who struggle to take power over their own lives: The Clockwork Girl by Anna […]
Review: Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin
Author Essie Fox reviews Finola Austin’s “remarkable” debut novel, Brontë’s Mistress. Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin is a literary novel created in the classic style of Victorian sensation. It also echoes certain themes from the Brontë sisters’ work. But at the centre of this novel is not some younger woman in the throes of her […]
The Victorian theatrical world of mystery and illusion
With the closure of our theatres, it only seems fair to bring a little old-fashioned footlights-and-greasepaint magic to Historia. So, ladies and gentlemen, I present for your especial enjoyment… the effervescent, the estimable, the essential Essie Fox! There has been quite an upsurge in Victorian-era novels published over the past few years. As a writer […]
The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements
The Coffin Path is a seventeenth-century ghost story. A story in which the oppression and wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors provides a compelling backdrop, where a sense of encroaching malevolence seeps like a ‘winding sheet of fog … silent, still, watching’ through the very stones of Scarcross Hall, and the fates of all who live there. Scarcross […]
The Traditions of Halloween
The festival of Halloween has become so popular that almost every street you walk will have windows aglow with pumpkin-head lanterns, signalling that any children out to celebrate are welcome to come and ‘Trick or Treat’. Many of those children will be dressed as skeletons, witches and ghosts — some of them might even wear […]