The Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) has great pleasure in revealing the 2025 Crown Awards shortlists, celebrating the best in historical writing, fiction and non-fiction, published during 2024–2025. There are three awards categories — HWA Gold Crown, HWA Non-fiction Crown, and HWA Debut Crown — and six shortlisted books in each category. The books shortlisted for […]
The 2025 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition winner and shortlist
It gives us great pleasure to announce the winning and shortlisted stories in the 2025 Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition. The winning story in the 2025 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition The winner of the 2025 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition: Final Score by Sean LuskThe judges say: “A […]
Historia interview: Carolyn Kirby
Carolyn Kirby, award-winning author of When We Fall and The Conviction Of Cora Burns. talks to AD Bergin about her new novel, Ravenglass. A sweeping adventure with a cross-dressing main character, Kit, it’s set against a backdrop of 18th-century social and industrial revolution, the lesser-known regional slave trade, and the Jacobite rising of 1745. AB: […]
The HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition longlist for 2025
We’re delighted to announce the longlist for the 2025 Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition: 25 impressive pieces of historical short fiction which go through to the next round of judging. Congratulations to all the longlisted authors! The HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition 2025 longlist: Iko of Benin, King’s Diver by […]
Philip of France, medieval England’s greatest enemy
England’s greatest enemy during the medieval period was (of course!) French: King Philip II, also called Philip Augustus. Astute and cunning, he played his Plantagenet rivals against one another and, as the historian Catherine Hanley says, became Europe’s most powerful monarch. France was one of the great power-houses of medieval Europe, and much of the […]
The 2025 HWA Crown Awards longlists
The HWA is delighted to announce the Crown Awards longlists for 2025, celebrating the best in historical writing, fiction and non-fiction, published during 2024–2025. There are three awards categories: HWA Gold Crown, HWA Non-fiction Crown, and HWA Debut Crown, and 12 books in each category. The books longlisted for the HWA Crown Awards for 2025 […]
Syndrome K, the ‘disease’ that saved lives in occupied Rome
Sarah Freethy uncovers the extraordinary story of Syndrome K, the supposedly deadly disease that saved lives in German-occupied Rome in 1943. The Fatebenefratelli Hospital sits on an island in the south bend of the Tiber, in the heart of Rome. It looks as if a great ship beached itself between Trastevere and the Jewish Quarter, […]
Review: King & Conqueror
King & Conqueror, the BBC’s new series telling “the epic story of 1066 and the brutal battle for a kingdom”, began on BBC One on Sunday, 24 August, 2025. The historian Annie Whitehead reviews the first episode and finds it “a wasted opportunity to tackle the subject”. For years, Anglo-Saxon history languished in the film […]