Sometimes we can get access to a kind of time machine. Reading good historical fiction can transport us to our social and political past, as Sara Sheridan says. But things like Covid lockdowns, when the streets are stripped of crowds and transport, can also open a time portal – which is how she came to […]
The Fair Botanists by Sara Sheridan
It’s the summer of 1822 and Edinburgh is a-buzz with rumours of King George IV’s impending visit. In botanical circles, however, a different kind of excitement has gripped the city. In the newly-installed Botanic Garden, the Agave Americana plant looks set to flower – an event that only occurs once every few decades. When newly-widowed […]
The Dance of the Serpents by Oscar de Muriel
There are many bad days in Edinburgh police’s subdivision ‘The Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly’. And in the pantheon of the worst days, today takes the podium. Because the English Inspector Ian Frey, and his Scottish boss ‘Nine-Nails’ McGray are called into a meeting in the […]
The Darker Quacks – Between folklore and science
Oscar de Muriel found the Victorian clash between science and superstition an irresistible background for his Frey and McGray spooky Scottish whodunits, he tells Historia. A man sets up a box amidst a busy market, jumps on top of it cradling a boxful of tiny glass vials, and begins his chant. His new miraculous tonic […]
Historia Interviews: Kaite Welsh
Kaite Welsh is an author, critic, journalist and activist. Her excellent debut novel, The Wages of Sin, set in the dark underworld of Victorian Edinburgh, is published by Tinder Press on 1 June. Here she discusses with fellow Victorianista Anna Mazzola her love of history, feminism, mob-caps and buttered crumpets. Your protagonist, Sarah Gilchrist, is […]