During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, a young Englishwoman delivers vital forged documents to a Jewish scientist. This is her first ‘assignment’, she is out of her depth and justifiably scared – and in a very short time she lies dead of an apparent heroin overdose in a Cambridge bedroom. So begins Rory Clements’ […]
A Place In History
Jane Harlond explores how real places inspire authors. There is a cave in Iceland that I will always remember. It is a place I have never been, but Karen Maitland took me there in Falcons of Fire and Ice and I have never been able to forget it. There is a valley full of butterflies […]
Winter is Coming by Carolyne Larrington
Writing in the Guardian newspaper in December, 2015 Carolyne Larrington, author of Winter is Coming, The Medieval World of Game of Thrones says: “Both the show and the book sequence on which it’s based, George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, reflect very closely the cultures, beliefs and practices of (the Medieval) era. […]
The Last Royal Rebel by Anna Keay
During the horrific, botched execution of James, Duke of Monmouth, in 1685, the crowd remained silent and ‘many cried’, until, incensed by the ‘barbarous usage’ of the duke, they surged forward and would have torn the executioner to pieces had soldiers not prevented it. Yet the label on Monmouth’s portrait in the National Gallery reads: […]