Louise Brown charts the history of the extraordinary Nepalese Rana dynasty and their complicated relationship with the British Raj. Nepal enchants foreigners. I have been captivated by the country since I lived in Kathmandu twenty five years ago, and writing my latest novel, The Himalayan Summer, has taken me back there again. Today, Nepal is […]
The Ghosts of History
Judith Allnatt on the ghosts of history and the inspiration behind her book, The Silk Factory. When a friend told me that she was hearing strange sounds in her house accompanied by a strong smell of soot, despite there being no open fires, it set me wondering what the site had been used for in […]
To Walk Invisible: BBC’s Brontë Biopic
Screenwriter Sally Wainwright is best known for hard-hitting drama, Happy Valley and ratings hit, Last Tango in Halifax. Kicking off her career with a stint on Emmerdale, she’s found her niche writing, and latterly directing, TV drama set in the North of England. Her work is characterised by down-to-earth storytelling with a big dash of […]
Historia Interviews: Tom Williams and Paul Fraser Collard
Writers Tom Williams (above right) and Paul Fraser Collard (above left) both write novels set in the nineteenth century, yet both came to the period in very different ways. Here they discuss what first fired their inspiration and what keeps them interested in the period. TOM: I never set out to write historical novels. My […]
The Ghosts of Silent Film
I’ve long had a fascination with the art of Victorian photography – how those grainy old sepia images enable us to peer straight through a historical mirror into the past: for the very first time to be able to see exactly how people looked back then. Even the sparkle in their eyes. Because of this […]
Victoria: ITV’s New Flagship Drama
It is every teenager’s dream. At the age of 18 you break free of the Muggles who have been controlling your life since childhood and at the same time you are granted a miraculous power, which means that everybody has to do what you say. Even Harry Potter didn’t manage the last part but in […]
The Unseeing by Anna Mazzola
Every now and then a debut novel comes along that stands out from the crowd. The Unseeing by Anna Mazzola is one. Sarah Gale is a seamstress, prostitute and single mother, incarcerated in Newgate Prison, sentenced to hang for her role in the murder of Hannah Brown. Young, ambitious lawyer, Edmund Fleetwood, is appointed to […]
The Muse for Alice in Wonderland
This year, 2015, is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the classic Victorian fantasy for which the author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, used the pen name of Lewis Carroll. But it was in 1864 when Dodgson (then a young clergyman and mathematics don at Oxford) presented a girl who was twelve […]