On 29 May, Oak Apple Day, it’ll be 396 years from Charles II’s birth in 1630 and 366 since his restoration. To mark the occasion, Historia spoke to Claire Hobson, whose biography charts those 30 turbulent years that formed the future king. Your book, Charles II: From the Cradle to the Crown, looks self-explanatory from […]
Charles I’s Private Life by Mark Turnbull
The execution of King Charles I is one of the well-known facts of British history, and an often-quoted snippet from our past. He lost the civil war and his head. But there is more to Charles than the civil war and his death. To fully appreciate the momentous events that marked the twenty-four years of […]
Charles I – the boy who would be King
Charles I is often thought of in polarised terms, as a martyr or a murderer. Mark Turnbull, author of a new biography of the king, argues that by more closely examining Charles’s personal relationships a more three-dimensional image of the man can be built up. Here he writes about the boy who would become a […]
Henrietta Maria, a forgotten queen?
Frances Quinn’s novel The Smallest Man is inspired by the life of Jeffrey Hudson, the ‘court dwarf’ of Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s French wife. But who was this spirited woman who was both dearly loved and deeply unpopular? Frances looks at the friendship between a courtier and a queen who has been all but forgotten […]
Henrietta Maria: queen, warrior, politician, woman
Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, died 350 years ago in 1669. It’s time to reconsider this strong-willed queen, argues historian Leanda de Lisle.
Review: Charles I: Downfall of a King
Charles I: Downfall of a King (BBC Four, 9 July, 2019) reviewed by James Burge for Historia magazine
Killing a king: the execution of Charles I
This year sees the 370th anniversary of the execution of Charles I on 30 January, 1649, an event which was, by law, commemorated annually for almost 200 years. Charles’s biographer, Leanda de Lisle, writes about the day they killed a king. Charles I awoke before dawn in St James’s Palace on the day of his […]
Historia interviews: Leanda de Lisle
White King, Leanda de Lisle’s biography of Charles I, won the 2018 Historical Writers’ Association Non-fiction Crown at an awards ceremony earlier this month. Historia talks to the author of this “quietly revolutionary” book.
The HWA Non-fiction Crown celebrates the best in historical non-fiction writing.