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 […]
The Protestant Wind
The course of English, and later British, history could have been changed on several occasions by fleets setting out from southern European countries if it hadn’t been for a number of weather events which have come to be known, collectively, as the ‘Protestant Wind’. Maggie Craig explains. The Protestant Wind is the name given to […]
The Dead Men by JC Harvey
It’s Summer, 1630. The Swedish army is fighting its way down through Germany, with Jack Fiskardo and his company of scouts, or ‘discoverers’, fighting the guerrilla war ahead of the main advance. There are new allies to be made, new perils to overcome, new enemies to outwit and new adventures to pursue; but there is […]
Henrietta Maria by Leanda de Lisle
Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s queen, is the most reviled consort in British history. Condemned as the ‘Popish brat of France’ and a ‘notorious whore’, she remains in popular memory the woman who turned the king Catholic — and so causing a civil war — and a cruel and bigoted mother. Leanda de Lisle unpicks these […]
Historia interview: SG MacLean
To mark SG (Shona) MacLean’s new novel, The Winter List, being published, Historia spoke to her about returning to characters we thought we’d seen the last of, as well as how she goes about researching her novels and the importance of place. Shona also offered us some advice for new writers as well as a […]
The Winter List by SG MacLean
By the summer of 1660 the last remnants of the Republic have been swept away and the Stuarts have been restored under their king, Charles II. A list of regicides believed to be involved in the death of Charles I is drawn up. Gruesome executions begin to take place and the hunt intensifies for those […]
Charles I’s Private Life by Mark Turnbull
The execution of King Charles I is one of the well-known facts of British history, and an often-quoted snippet from our past. He lost the civil war and his head. But there is more to Charles than the civil war and his death. To fully appreciate the momentous events that marked the twenty-four years of […]