It’s 1896. As a group of illusionists prepare for a grand spectacle, one young woman, Cecily Marsden, harbours a secret. For she possesses impossible powers – powers she little understands. Meanwhile Eadie Carleton, a pioneering early film-maker, struggles for her talent to be taken seriously, and a talented magician, George Perris, begins to see the […]
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 […]
Omdurman by Griff Hosker
Being a soldier of the Queen at the end of the 19th century meant spending much of your time abroad. Jack Roberts is a hero and a good soldier but he is torn between his career and his son who is looked after in England. When the Mahdists begin to enlarge their empire Jack is […]
Edinburgh’s New Town and the 200-year history of 10 Scotland Street
Leslie Hills looks back at what intrigued her about her house, and how it set her off on a decades-long search for the history of 10 Scotland Street in Edinburgh’s New Town — the subject of her newly-published book. When finally I paid off the mortgage on my home, number 10 Scotland Street, a Georgian […]
10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills
10 Scotland Street – the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence and its widespread connections over two centuries across the globe. 10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills is published on 1 December, 2023. With a foreword by Val McDermid, this is her first […]
Sharpe’s Command by Bernard Cornwell
If any man can do the impossible it’s Richard Sharpe. And the impossible is exactly what the formidable Major Sharpe is asked to do when he’s dispatched on an undercover mission behind enemy lines, deep in the Spanish countryside. For a remote village is about to become the centre of a battle for the future […]
Decadent Women: Yellow Book Lives by Jad Adams
During the 1890s, British women for the first time began to leave their family homes to seek work, accommodation, and financial and sexual freedom. Decadent Women is an account of some of these women who wrote for the innovative art and literary journal called the Yellow Book. For the first time, based on original research, […]
A Bitter Remedy by Alis Hawkins
Jesus College, Oxford, 1881. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings and the medical examination reveals some shocking findings. When the young man’s guardian blames the college for his death and threatens a scandal, Basil Rice, a Jesus College fellow with a secret to hide, is forced to act and finds himself drawn into […]