Jonathan Trigell, author of Under Country, recalls the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ in Yorkshire during the miners’ strike of 1984. Though it’s described as a riot, he argues, was it, in fact, the last battle fought on British soil to this day? 18 June, 1984, might already appear to be quite recent as a suitable subject […]
Agent in Peril by Alex Gerlis
Hiding in the horror of Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto with his family, scientist Roman Loszynski has a secret: a means of making aerial bombing raids frighteningly accurate. Codenamed Tatra, it could change the course of the war. With British agent Jack Miller now in Switzerland, back in Berlin undercover spy Sophia von Naundorf is determined to […]
Under Country by Jonathan Trigell
This is the story of the miners’ strike: the sudden shock of poverty; the camaraderie; the brutality. It is the story of one man’s fight for redemption, as the wounds of an embattled generation hardened to scars. There was blood on coal, it didn’t come for free. But it drove the factories and the steel […]
The women left behind by Scott’s Antarctic expedition
Anne Fletcher’s latest book, Widows of the Ice, “brings a new perspective to a story that we thought we already knew” by focussing on the three women widowed by Scott’s Antarctic expedition – and sidelined by its ‘heroic tragedy’ narrative. The idea for this book came when I was on holiday and thinking about the […]
Celtic Cross by Sara Sheridan
About to get married, Mirabelle and her fiancé retired Superintendent Alan McGregor are torn about where they will settle. But when a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity comes up to buy a secluded house on the banks of the Firth of Forth, they submit to getting permission from the local landlord. But that permission comes at a price, […]
The Spanish Civil War: a war against children
“Every war is a war against children,” Eglantyne Jebb, the founder of Save the Children said. This was particularly true during the Spanish Civil War, as Maggie Brookes explains. When the bombing of Madrid by Franco‘s fascists began in the autumn and winter of 1936, women scrambled aboard trains and took their children north to […]
Widows of the Ice by Anne Fletcher
As Captain Scott lay freezing and starving to death on his return journey from the South Pole, he wrote with a stub of pencil his final words: ‘For God’s sake look after our people.’ Uppermost in his mind were the three women who would now be widows: Kathleen, his own bohemian artist wife; Oriana, the […]
Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare
Lena Aldridge is wondering if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre career she hoped for hasn’t worked out. Instead, she’s stuck singing in a sticky-floored basement club in Soho and her married lover has just left her. She has nothing to look forward to until a stranger offers her the chance of a […]