Seville in the 16th century was a city of wealth, the arts and international trade. But, says Matthew Carr, author of The Emperor of Seville, it was also Spain’s criminal capital, winning the nickname of the Great Babylon. He tells Historia how Seville embodied the paradox at the heart of Spain’s Golden Age. History tends […]
The ‘ordinary’ Victorian murderess
Victorian women who killed have fascinated writers for over a century. What made the ‘angel in the house’ — a popular idea in the late 1850s — behave like a devil? Especially if they seemed, well, ordinary. Lesley McDowell, author of Love and Other Poisons, wonders what an ‘ordinary’ murderess was. “[She was] an ordinary, […]
The Second World War crime boom
For criminals, 1939 to 1945 were “the golden years”, as a crime boom swept Britain, The blackout and the black market that rationing encouraged were a gift to them. Mark Ellis explains why law-breaking rose by 60 per cent during the Second World War. I am the author of a series of crime thrillers featuring […]
Feisty Victorian women
Were Victorian women feisty? As Jem Poster says, they wouldn’t have recognised the word, but they’d have known the attitude. Some were feisty enough to become detectives – like Eliza Mace, the fictional protagonist of his new book. Reviewers of our co-written historical detective mystery, Eliza Mace, have repeatedly described the book’s titular heroine as […]
Crime and politics in the early 18th century
Douglas Skelton found inspiration in the criminals and politics of the early 18th century, a time relatively unexplored in fiction, for his historical crime novels. He explains what it was about the period that drew him to set his Jonas Flint books then. When I began my adventure in historical fiction, following years of writing […]
The Drummond Affair: Murder and Mystery in Provence by Daniel Smith and Stephanie Matthews
1950s France. A British establishment figure. A shocking crime. A miscarriage of justice. The search for truth. In 1952, in a peaceful corner of Provence, a farmer’s son stumbled upon a terrible scene. Three bodies: a husband and wife shot dead, their ten-year-old daughter savagely beaten to death. They were all British. So begins one […]
The Men Who Were Sherlock Holmes by Daniel Smith
In 1893, young army officer Cecil Hambrough was murdered at the sprawling Ardlamont estate in Scotland, unleashing one of the most gripping court cases Victorian Britain had ever known. Even more remarkably, the case brought together two pioneering forensic experts – Joseph Bell and Henry Littlejohn – two men upon whom Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock […]
Felo de Se: the gruesome punishment that led to me writing The Low Road
Katharine Quarmby’s investigation into the gruesome burial of a suicide victim — for felo de se — with links to her home town inspired her first novel, The Low Road. For Women’s History Month, she explains why this punishment fell disproportionately onto poor women, and what made her want to tell this story. On a […]