Welcome to Historia’s most popular regular feature, our round-up of books published by members of the Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) to look out for during the coming year. For 2024, there are more than 200 books covering history, biography, and historical fiction and spanning eras from Ancient Greece and Egypt to the 1980s. They sweep […]
True love (why the greatest love stories are the ones that actually happened)
The historian Emily Hauser explains why tales of true love – love that really happened – make the greatest love stories of all. “I’m in love”: it’s a phrase that’s been said since the beginning of time. We all care about love, and all of us want more of it in our lives — whether […]
Ancient Love Stories by Emily Hauser
We don’t have to look to works of fiction to find tales of true love. The pages of history are crammed with stories about love that are, quite literally, true. And many of them are among the greatest love stories ever told. Ancient Love Stories brings together some of the most remarkable romances in history — […]
Treason of Sparta by Christian Cameron
When the dust settled and the blood dried after the Battle of Plataea, Greeks might have thought that their freedom was secured. But before the corpse of the Great King’s general was cold, Athens and Sparta began to bicker over dividing up the spoils. After an autumn of victory, it’s a long cold winter among […]
History as “a possession for all time”
History, by looking clearly at the past, can help to prepare for the future. This was proposed by the Greek historian Thucydides and expanded in the Renaissance by Machiavelli, whose analysis of power structures can be seen to apply again and again, argues Michael Arnheim, making history relevant “for all time”. Thucydides (c460 – c400 […]
Clytemnestra’s Bind by Susan C Wilson
The House of Atreus is spiralling into self-destruction — a woman must find a way to break the family curse. Queen Clytemnestra’s world shatters when Agamemnon, a rival to the throne of Mycenae, storms her palace, destroys her family and claims not only the throne but Clytemnestra herself. Tormented by her loss, she vows to […]
Motives of a Bronze Age murderess
What drove Queen Clytemnestra to murder her husband, Agamemnon? As Susan C Wilson writes, she had enough of a motive given the savage history of his family and his treatment of her children; enough to demand vengeance in Bronze Age society. What springs to mind when we consider Clytemnestra from Greek mythology? Adulterous wife of […]
Six godmothers of archaeology
Alexandra Walsh pays tribute to six pioneering women who gained respect in the male domain of archaeology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and who inspired her latest novel. They were the ‘godmothers of archaeology’ who worked in Crete, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Turkey at sites such as Knossos, Babylon and Troy. The […]