Screening a Second World War drama series so soon after the 80th anniversary commemorations could be a bold decision – or a predictable one. Elizabeth Buchan has watched the first episode of World on Fire (BBC One, Sundays, 9pm) and tells Historia whether the gamble has paid off. A world war with the best tourist […]
Reviews
Looking for your next read? HWA members review the best new historical writing, recommend their desert island books and revisit some old favourites.
Review: The Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan
Elizabeth Buchan’s new novel, The Museum of Broken Promises, is a keenly observant exploration of secrets and loss set in 1980s Prague and Paris in the present day. Catherine Hokin finds it “complex and both haunting and haunted”.
Review: The Hidden by Mary Chamberlain
Mary Chamberlain’s latest novel is The Hidden, which focuses on the German occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War. Duncan Barrett reviews her “taut and troubling” book. In 2016, I spent three months in the Channel Islands, interviewing more than a hundred men and women who lived through the German Occupation during […]
Review: Sanditon
Does Sanditon, the new ITV Sunday evening serial, succeed as a drama? Historian of the Regency period Naomi Clifford reviews it for Historia.
Review: Peaky Blinders Season 5
At last, the waiting’s over. Peaky Blinders is back, and on BBC One, too. Was it worth hanging on for? Katherine Clements reviews Season 5 for Historia.
Review: The Bone Fire by SD Sykes
It’s a nerve-wracking thing, a series, warns Catherine Hokin. The author commits to a character, the reader buys in; everyone steels themselves against the nightmare moment when a shark will appear and be thoroughly jumped. Well, fear not, Oswald de Lacy fans, this is a shark-free zone: SD Sykes’s latest outing for her medieval crime-solver […]
Review: The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal
“The wombat is a joy, a triumph, a delight, a madness.” Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The leader of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Rossetti, had a particular affection for wombats, and one of them turns up in a small but key role in Elizabeth Macneal’s much-acclaimed novel The Doll Factory, set in 1850s London around the world of the […]
Review: The Last Czars
Gill Paul, author of two novels about the Romanovs, reviews the Netflix series The Last Czars for Historia