1896, Bannin Bay, Australia. When British pearl-boat captain Charles Brightwell goes missing out at sea, rumours of mutiny and murder swell within the bay’s dens and back alleys. Only his headstrong daughter, Eliza, refuses to believe her father is dead, and sets out on a dangerous journey to uncover the truth. But in a town […]
Historia interviews: 2022 HWA Gold Crown Award shortlist: Natasha Pulley
Natasha Pulley was shortlisted for the 2022 Gold Crown Award for her novel The Kingdoms. Readers of her books, including The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, won’t be surprised that the judges loved its compelling strangeness, calling it: “An intricate, immersive tale set in an alternative Britain, where Napoleon won the war and French is spoken […]
Music hall and musical inspiration
Music hall and other old songs can provide musical clues in historical fiction — clues which carry even deeper meaning than the remembered snatches of tunes themselves do. Sarah Rayne, who took inspiration from such songs for her latest book, Chalice of Darkness, explains how it works. Old songs and fragments of faded music can […]
Sherlock Holmes and the Persian Slipper by Linda Stratmann
It’s London in 1877. When medical student Mr Stamford is visited by his cousin, Lily, he is disturbed by the sinister tale she relates. Lily’s friend, Una, has recently inherited an old country house and settled down to married life in Coldwell, a small Essex village. However, Una’s letters to Lily indicate that she is […]
Hear No Evil by Sarah Smith
Glasgow, 1817: Jean Campbell, a young Deaf woman, is witnessed throwing a child into the River Clyde from the Old Bridge. If found guilty she faces one of two fates; death by hanging or incarceration in an asylum. But Jean’s deafness leaves her isolated and unable to defend herself, until the authorities call in Robert […]
The Evolution of Charles Darwin by Diana Preston
When 22-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles — invited by ship’s captain Robert FitzRoy, who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship’s naturalist — he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become perhaps the most important and epoch-changing voyage […]
My voyage discovering Charles Darwin
The historian Diana Preston travelled around the world to retrace Charles Darwin’s momentous voyage aboard the HMS Beagle for her new book, The Evolution of Charles Darwin. She tells Historia about her own voyage of discovery in his wake. After months of planning, I finally arrived on the densely-forested island of Chiloe, off Chile’s south-western […]
The adventures of a Black Edwardian intellectual
Pamela Roberts tells Historia the remarkable story of a man, born in poverty on Antigua, who overcame prejudice and racism to win places at some of the world’s most prestigious universities and become first a priest and then a local politician. He’s the subject of her new biography, The Adventures of a Black Edwardian Intellectual […]