Beatriz de Farrera is a trobairitz (a female troubadour) at the court of Toulouse in 1096. She sings of love but intends to evade marriage and romantic entanglements. Her patron, Philippa, is the heiress of the rich city and county of Toulouse. Philippa’s uncle Raimon plans to marry his niece to the ageing king of […]
Historia Live in Dublin: Sheila O’Flanagan, Jennifer Ryan and Nicola Cassidy
Historia Live in Dublin is back on 2 October, 2024! With Sheila O’Flanagan, Jennifer Ryan and Nicola Cassidy talking about War in Fiction with Hazel Gaynor. Read on to find out more about the authors and how to get your free ticket. Our programme of Historia Live Dublin events continues this autumn with War in […]
Scandalous Women by Gill Paul
1966: in London, Jackie Collins’s racy The World is Full of Married Men hits bookshops and launches her career. In New York, Jacqueline Susann’s debut novel Valley of the Dolls is published, and she’s desperate for it to be a bestseller. But both are about to discover the price they will pay for being women […]
Clairmont by Lesley McDowell
It’s 1816, and a massive volcanic eruption has caused the worst storms that Europe has seen in decades, yet Percy and Mary Shelley have chosen to visit the infamous Lord Byron at his villa on Lake Geneva. It wasn’t their idea: Mary’s 18-year-old step-sister, Claire Clairmont, insisted. But the reason for Claire’s visit is more […]
The Wartime Book Club by Kate Thompson
Jersey, 1943. When the German Army invades the tranquil island, librarian Grace La Motée is determined to keep her services running. Ordered to destroy books which threaten the Nazi regime, she refuses, instead hiding them away and fighting back by forming a book club: a lifeline to help islanders escape the terror of war, one […]
How bestsellers through the ages mirrored their times
Gill Paul, herself a bestselling author, looks at how top-selling books mirrored the times they were published in. They weren’t only contemporary, either; historical fiction and fantasy are high on the list, perhaps not surprisingly to those who know the genres. Gill’s latest novel, Scandalous Women, is about the authors of two of these bestsellers. […]
Female sexuality in historical fiction
Lesley McDowell wanted to show all the consequences of women’s sexuality in her novel, Clairmont — the tragic and the happy. There was plenty of both in the Shelley-Godwin-Byron circle that shaped her protagonist Claire Clairmont’s life. And female sexual desire needs to be reflected in historical fiction, Lesley says. In a letter to her […]
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 […]