Historia Live in November – author event

Historia Live, the HWA’s series of author events showcasing historical fiction and history writing, is back at the Wheatsheaf in London on Wednesday, 15 November, at 7pm.

This month we welcome Nikki Marmery, whose novel Lilith has just been published; Francesca Peacock, author of Pure Wit, a biography of Margaret Cavendish; and Lola Jaye, whose The Attic Child was longlisted for this year’s Jhalak Prize.

The chair is Vaseem Khan, author of the award-winning Malabar House series.

Join us in our usual room upstairs in the Wheatsheaf pub at 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB. It’s on the north side of Oxford Street, about three minutes’ walk from Tottenham Court Road station. Be there a little earlier than 7pm if you want to get a drink from the bar downstairs.

It’s an informal, intimate space and very relaxed. If this is your first visit, we’re a friendly bunch and always happy to talk about history, books, and writing.

Space is limited, so please book your ticket in advance through Eventbrite to avoid being disappointed; they’re £5 per person.

The authors

Nikki Marmery

Nikki used to work as a financial journalist. She now writes fiction from a small village near Amersham, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her first novel, On Wilder Seas, was shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society’s New Novel Award and selected for the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation’s #AdventureSociety book club. Nikki wrote a feature for us about the lead character in her novel, Maria, an African woman who who sailed with Drake on the Golden Hind.

Lilith

Lilith and Adam are equal and happy in the Garden of Eden. But when Adam decides Lilith should submit to his will and lie beneath him, she refuses – and is banished forever from Paradise. Demonised and sidelined, Lilith watches in fury as God creates Eve, the woman who accepts her submission.

But Lilith has a secret: she has already tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Endowed with Wisdom, she knows why Asherah – God’s wife and equal, the Queen of Heaven – is missing. Lilith has a plan: she will rescue Eve, find Asherah, restore balance to the world and regain her rightful place in Paradise.

Lilith by Nikki Marmery was published on 9 October, 2023.

Francesca Peacock

Francesca is a writer and arts journalist based in London. She writes book reviews, art reviews, and features for the Telegraph, The Times, the TLS, the Spectator, the Financial Times, Prospect, and other publications. Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish is her first book.

Pure Wit

Margaret Cavendish, then Lucas, was born in 1623 to a wealthy family. In 1644, as England descended into civil war, she joined the court of the formidable Queen Henrietta Maria at Oxford, before following the court into exile in France. It was there that she met her (much older) lifelong partner, William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

She was a revolutionary writer. At a time when literature was dominated by men, she wrote passionately on sex, science and philosophy, defied convention by publishing under her own name, and advocated for women in work that predates the feminist movement. In 1666, she published The Blazing World, a brilliant, trail-blazing proto-novel thought to be one of the earliest works of science fiction. But her legacy divides opinion. And history has largely forgotten her.

Pure Wit by Francesca Peacock was published on 14 September, 2023.

Lola Jaye

Lola is an author and psychotherapist. She writes historical novels which feature characters tackling race, mental health — and life; subjects which she also covers in her public speaker role.

The Attic Child

In 1907, 12 year old Celestine spends most of his time locked in an attic room of a large house by the sea. Taken from his homeland and treated as an unpaid servant, he dreams of his family in Africa even if, as the years pass, he struggles to remember his mother’s face, and sometimes his real name.

Decades later, Lowra, a young orphan girl born into wealth and privilege, will find herself banished to the same attic. Lying under the floorboards of the room is an old porcelain doll, an unusual beaded claw necklace and, most curiously, a sentence etched on the wall behind an old cupboard, written in an unidentifiable language. Artefacts that will offer her a strange kind of comfort, and lead her to believe that she was not the first child to be imprisoned there.

The Attic Child by Lola Jaye comes out in paperback on 27 October, 2023.

Vaseem Khan

Vaseem is the author of two award-winning crime series set in India: the Baby Ganesh Agency series set in modern Mumbai, and the Malabar House historical crime novels set in 1950s Bombay. He co-hosts the popular crime fiction podcast The Red Hot Chilli Writers. Vaseem has just become chair of the Crime Writers’ Association.

Death of a Lesser God

In the fourth thriller in the Malabar House series, Persis and Archie travel to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where they collide head on with the prejudices and bloody politics of an era engulfed in flame. James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby’s father forces a new investigation into the killing.

The investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where, with the help of Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, she uncovers a possible link to a second case, the brutal murder of an African-American GI during the Calcutta Killings of 1946. Are the cases connected? And if Whitby didn’t murder Mazumdar, then who did?

Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan was published on 10 August, 2023.

Meet our authors

The discussion and Q&A session lasts about an hour, and the authors will be staying afterwards to sign their books. They all love meeting readers, so do go and say hello. Indie bookseller Primrose Hill Books will be there to supply copies of their books if you haven’t got them yet.

Get your tickets via Eventbrite.

We’ll be returning to Historia Live in January, 2024, with another group of acclaimed authors, and every two months after that.

If you’d like to see other books by HWA authors — and there are over 150 of them being published this year — we’ve got a round-up of books coming out in 2023 to browse. Historia’s Latest releases column also has information about the newest books, updated every publication day.

We’re hoping to start Historia Live events in other parts of the UK. If you’d like to get involved, please contact Gill Paul.

The first Historia Live in the Republic of Ireland is on 18 October in Dublin, with Siobhan MacGowan, Andrew Hughes and Niamh Boyce in conversation with Hazel Gaynor.