Angus Donald, author of Blood of the Bear, examines Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony in the late 8th century. It was a campaign not just about territory but about religion: Christian versus pagan. Could it be considered the first ‘crusade’? The First Crusade, historians claim, was launched by Pope Urban II in 1096, after the Pontiff […]
Night Climbing by Sarah Day
When Sylvia’s son, Cyril, vanishes during a perilous school trek in the German mountains, her world crumbles. A pre-trip postcard from Cyril hints that his teacher – now lauded for his rescue efforts – knew more about the stormy conditions than he has admitted. Sylvia shifts from frantic mother to justice seeker. Meanwhile in Hofsgrund, […]
Leaving Fatherland by Matt Graydon
Growing up a misfit in Nazi Germany, a victim of his father’s beatings, Oskar finds his love of books is a constant comfort in a world turned upside-down by violence. As a student, as a pilot in the brutal Luftwaffe during the Second World War, in an unhappy marriage to an English bride, he finds […]
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 […]
Nördlingen, a town where history is past and present
The Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) was a European conflict so destructive and so complex that setting a novel during the period must be a challenge. For JC Harvey, whose The Silver Wolf, the first in her Fiskardo’s War trilogy, takes place in the middle of that chaos, a good place to start is a small […]
Historia interviews, 2021 Crown Awards shortlists: Linda Colley
Historian Linda Colley is the fifth interviewee in Historia’s 2021 HWA Crown Awards series. Her latest book, The Gun, the Ship & the Pen, was shortlisted for the Non-fiction Crown Award. Subtitled Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World, it begins in Corsica in 1755 and moves through every continent, showing how constitutions […]
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 – […]