Fiona Veitch Smith travels to Weimar Berlin in 1930, using her antique Baedeker guidebook, and finds that the nearly 100-year-old book can still help her find the places she’s researching in the 2020s. In previous articles for Historia I outlined how I use vintage fashion and vintage guide books as research for my neo-Golden Age […]
The Berlin Murders by Fiona Veitch Smith
In September, 1930, fearless detective Miss Clara Vale is bound for Berlin, but this trip is all about la mode, not murder. Clara is set to walk the runway at Berlin Fashion Week, as a favour to her designer friend Juju, with her assistant Bella in tow. Elections loom in Germany, and among Juju’s friends, […]
The fall and rise of fascism
Catherine Hokin, author of The Girl Who Told the Truth, reflects on the rise and fall of Oswald Mosley’s fascist movement in England, how fascism continued after the end of the Second World War, and the lessons history can teach us. “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” That quote from […]
The Best of Intentions by Caroline Scott
1932: When gardener Robert Bardsley arrives at Anderby Hall, an Elizabethan manor house in the Gloucestershire countryside, it is home to Greenfields, a community of artists and idealists. Robert has been employed to revive Anderby’s famous roses and restore the topiary garden, but he also soon befriends the other residents: from colourful neighbour Trudie, who […]
Before Dorothy by Hazel Gaynor
Long before Dorothy visits Oz, her aunt, Emily Gale, sets off on her own unforgettable adventure much closer to home… When news reaches Kansas that her beloved sister has tragically died, Emily must become a mother overnight. Her sister’s orphaned child, Dorothy, desperately needs a home. But Emily doubts her ability to fill her sister’s […]
The Stranger’s Companion by Mary Horlock
With a population of five hundred souls, isolated Sark has a reputation for being ”the island where nothing ever happens”. Until, one day in October, 1933, the neatly folded clothes of an unknown man and woman are discovered abandoned at a coastal beauty spot. As the search for the missing couple widens, Sark finds itself […]
Fashion research for historical novels
Fiona Veitch Smith immerses herself in researching her 1920s and 1930s novels, using period objects and recreating costumes – which she also wears. She tells Historia about her 10 years of historical fashion research and offers some tips for anyone who’d like to try this way of getting a feel for the era they’re writing […]
The Paris Muse by Louisa Treger
“Living with him was like living at the centre of the universe. It was electrifying and humbling, blissful and destructive, all at the same time.” Paris in 1936, and when Dora Maar, a talented French photographer, painter and poet, is introduced to Pablo Picasso, she is instantly mesmerized. Drawn to his volcanic creativity, it isn’t […]