Marie-Madeleine Fourcade led a French intelligence network supplying information to MI6. Barbara Bertram ran a secret safe house for agents in Surrey. They met several times. Here, Rachel Hore writes about how the two women sparked the idea for her new novel, and the challenges of writing fiction about real people. My new novel, The […]
Women in science – a true story
Sometimes the inspiration for a novel is very close to home, very personal. It was the true story of her mother and aunt, both biologists and PhDs, both denied the careers they might have had, that led Rachel Hore to the idea for The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge. Here she writes about the barriers that […]
Imagining Olga Gray, a beautiful spy
The bestselling author Rachel Hore tells Historia about the time research for a new novel unearthed a character so compelling that she took over, and changed, Rachel’s thoughts about her book – which became the recently-published A Beautiful Spy. Serendipity must be the origin of many a historical novel. I was researching an idea for […]



