Dan Raglan, former Foreign Legion fighter, alias The Englishman, returns. Somewhere in the Sahara, on the desolate border between Sudan and Chad, a P51 Mustang with long-range drop tanks slowly emerges from the dunes. Inside, the skeletalised remains of a man missing for three decades. His flying jacket bears no insignia, a worn leather attaché […]
The history of history on television
Television – especially BBC TV – used to be an integral part of a family Christmas, with the nation (theoretically) gathered round the telly to watch the big film or the Queen’s Speech. All that’s history now. But what about the history of the Beeb itself in this, its 100th year, we asked the former […]
Christmas reading 2022 – our pick of top historical books
We asked nine well-loved authors to each recommend two historical books for Christmas 2022 to give, receive, or treat yourself with. These include many of the most absorbing books, fiction and non-fiction, published recently. We hope these suggestions inspire you. DV Bishop The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola. A winter’s tale full of mystery and […]
Review: The Lost Man of Bombay by Vaseem Khan
In the latest in the Malabar House series, Vaseem Khan gives us a brilliant insight into Europeans’ involvement in post-partition India, as well as a cracking good mystery, Alis Hawkins writes. On one level, The Lost Man of Bombay can be seen as a straightforward serial killer story; on another it’s a glimpse into a […]
The Adventures of a Black Edwardian Intellectual by Pamela Roberts
Scholar, reverend, politician, and perhaps aristocrat… James Arthur Stanley Harley was certainly a polymath. Born in a poor village in the Caribbean island of Antigua, he went on to attend Howard, Harvard, Yale and Oxford universities, was ordained a priest in Canterbury Cathedral and was elected to Leicestershire County Council. He was a choirmaster, a […]
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 […]
Partition, politics, and a prime minister’s passion
It’s 75 years since India won independence. Vaseem Khan, who writes historical crime set in the years shortly afterwards, looks back at the process that led to independence and partition, and at the surprising relationship between two of the key political figures of the time. There’s a wonderful photograph – taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson – […]
The Winter Guest by WC Ryan
January 1921, and though the Great War is over, in Ireland a new, civil war is raging. The once-grand Kilcolgan House, a crumbling bastion shrouded in sea-mist, lies half empty and filled with ghosts — both real and imagined — the Prendevilles, the noble family within, co-existing only as the balance of their secrets is […]