It’s time for Historia’s summer reading suggestions. We asked 12 historical writers to each recommend two books for history lovers, fiction or non-fiction, which stood out for them recently. Whether you’re going overseas for the first time this decade or relaxing at home, we hope you enjoy our picks! Jean Fullerton My first must-read is The […]
The Pilot’s Girl by Catherine Hokin
‘Smile, nod, and don’t breathe a word of what happens here. Or I’ll put you on the next train to Auschwitz myself.’ Four years later. Hanni Winter shivers in her thin coat as she hurries through the empty Berlin streets to her job. Despite the freezing winter and poverty all around, her cheeks flush when she meets […]
The Berlin blockade, 1948–9: the first Cold War stand-off
Catherine Hokin, author of The Pilot’s Girl, looks at the Berlin Blockade of 1948–9 – the first Cold War stand-off – and how the western Allies responded. “History is written by the victors” is one of those phrases that is repeated so often it has turned into a cliché. To a writer interested in the […]
What Only We Know by Catherine Hokin
When Karen Cartwright is unexpectedly called home to nurse her ailing father, she goes with a heavy heart. The house she grew up in feels haunted by the memory of her father’s closely guarded secrets about her beautiful mother Elizabeth’s tragic death years before. As she packs up the house, Karen discovers an old photograph […]
The Commandant’s Daughter by Catherine Hokin
1933, Berlin. Ten-year-old Hanni Foss stands by her father watching the celebrations marking Adolf Hitler as Germany’s new leader. As the torchlights fade, her safe and happy childhood changes forever as Reiner, the father she adores, is corrupted by his new position as commandant of an infamous concentration camp… As the Nazi regime crumbles, 12 […]
Review: The Good Death by SD Sykes
Catherine Hokin reviews The Good Death by SD Sykes and finds it “a book to get lost in” and a story for our times. The Good Death is the fifth book in SD Sykes’s 14th-century Oswald de Lacy series of which I have been a fan since book one. I remain a staunch fan with […]
The Secretary by Catherine Hokin: exclusive extract for Historia
The Secretary, Catherine Hokin’s fourth Second World War-inspired novel, is a dual-timeline story set in the Third Reich Berlin of the 1940s and the Stasi-controlled eastern side of the city in the 1980s. Our exclusive extract is the prologue, which introduces us to Magda, one of the two main protagonists, and the Tower House – […]
Review: The Prophet by Martine Bailey
Martine Bailey’s latest novel The Prophet is a sequel to 2019’s The Almanack and is another beautifully crafted story balanced on the cusp of the old world and the new, writes Catherine Hokin. The Almanack took place in 1752 against a backdrop of the transition from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and the ‘lost […]