It may not be the weightiest of historical enigmas, but the sex life of Adolf Hitler has to be one of the most enduring. Historians probing the dictator’s psychology repeatedly find themselves turning to his sexuality in the search for some clue towards his warped world view. The issue of whether Hitler was gay, straight, […]
Picture This
In early 2013 I found an intriguing old photograph in a local charity shop. I love anonymous old pictures of people, especially if they hadn’t realised they were being photographed: they’re like a stolen glimpse into a vanished life. This scene was of a narrow street running between rows of small, conical stone houses, and […]
Puglia’s Hard Past
Before writing The Night Falling, I went on my first ever overseas research trip: to Puglia, in the far south of Italy’s ‘heel’. I wasn’t sure what I’d find – whether all traces of the inter-war era I was interested in would have been wiped out. Puglia is an increasingly popular tourist destination, and I […]
The Picture Tells the Story
In 2002 my first novel, Call The Swallow, was published. Set before, during and after the Holocaust, it tells the story of a man’s search for his sister who disappeared during World War II. When I was on the publicity round for the book, the question that kept cropping up again and again was how […]
Our History
I once asked a group of twelve friends if anyone could put Richard II, Henry II and Edward II in chronological order. I’m sad to report only two managed it and one of those admitted it was a lucky guess. There ensued a discussion about history. Some said they hated it at school while other […]
Picture This
Dressed in their Sunday best, straight-backed and solemn-faced, the family in the photograph appears the epitome of working class respectability. Taken around 1913, the picture shows Annie Baker, her husband Arthur and their daughter Florence. There is a look of calm innocence in their eyes, and perhaps this is why I have always found the […]
Manda Scott watches Peaky Blinders
Warning: contains spoilers! If you’re old enough to remember Last of the Mohicans – the first, amazing, black-and-white-but-blood-red-scarlet-on-the-inside, Philip Madoc version in which he learned the Mohawk language to play the part, not the ghastly, plastic Daniel Day Lewis vehicle – will know that once in a while, the BBC steps beyond its comfort zone […]
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
Eagerly awaited, Sarah Waters’ latest novel The Paying Guests does not disappoint. Fans of Waters have come to expect her tight and ingenious plotting, meticulous period scene setting and vividly distinctive use of language: who but she would describe the sound of a dripping tap as making, ‘the occasional echoey plink of drips,’ or the eyes of […]