In 16th-century Rome, Beatrice Cenci – youngest daughter of a powerful nobleman – is destined for a life of gilded insignificance. Wealth talks within the city’s grand palazzos, and women must remain silent. Then her brother is found murdered by a rival family, and Beatrice’s domineering, tyrannical father insists they flee to La Rocca. But […]
Search Results for: ancient rome
Historical books to look out for in 2025
Welcome to Historia’s most popular regular feature, our round-up of historical books published by members of the Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) to look out for during the coming year. In 2025, there are over 130 books covering history, biography, and historical fiction and spanning eras from Ancient Greece to the 1980s. And there will be […]
Review: Silk Roads exhibition
Lesley Downer reviews the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum, open until February, 2025. There’s something irresistibly romantic about the Silk Roads. The very name conjures up images of caravans of camels, piled high with baggage, wending their way across desert and steppes. It makes you want to pack your bags and set off […]
Christian versus pagan: was Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony the first crusade?
Angus Donald, author of Blood of the Bear, examines Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony in the late 8th century. It was a campaign not just about territory but about religion: Christian versus pagan. Could it be considered the first ‘crusade’? The First Crusade, historians claim, was launched by Pope Urban II in 1096, after the Pontiff […]
Historical books to look out for in 2024
Welcome to Historia’s most popular regular feature, our round-up of books published by members of the Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) to look out for during the coming year. For 2024, there are more than 200 books covering history, biography, and historical fiction and spanning eras from Ancient Greece and Egypt to the 1980s. They sweep […]
True love (why the greatest love stories are the ones that actually happened)
The historian Emily Hauser explains why tales of true love – love that really happened – make the greatest love stories of all. “I’m in love”: it’s a phrase that’s been said since the beginning of time. We all care about love, and all of us want more of it in our lives — whether […]
Rewriting Creation: the Fall of Woman
Nikki Marmery explores the ancient stories that made her ask: where is the mother in the creation myth? This question inspired her to write Lilith, an allegory of the demise of female divinity and equality in prehistory – in other words, the Fall of Woman. The legend of Lilith, Adam’s first wife in the Garden […]
Roman Andalusia
Alistair Tosh has a lifelong interest in Roman history and a love of Andalusia. When he began writing historical fiction it was natural to combine the two in his Edge of Empire series. Here he looks at the history of Roman Andalusia and at some of the places he features in his books. Warrior, the […]