It’s October, 1708. Playing Captain Hazard’s Game brings murder and scandal uncomfortably close, and Widow Trotter and her friends at the Bay-Tree Chocolate House are drawn into a frenzied game of chance and speculation at a time when the market is unregulated. Fortunes are made overnight, and ruin could descend in a single hour. People […]
HWA Crown Awards 2022: the longlists
We’re delighted to announce the HWA Crown Awards longlists for 2022: 36 books celebrating the best in historical writing, fiction and non-fiction, published in 2021-2022. There are three awards categories: HWA Gold Crown, HWA Non-fiction Crown, and HWA Debut Crown. The books longlisted for the HWA Crown Awards for 2022 are: Gold Crown Award 2022 […]
The French Resistance: shadier than you think
Chris Lloyd, author of the HWA Gold Crown Award-winning The Unwanted Dead, talks about his fascination with the German occupation of France and the concepts of resistance and collaboration; topics in which, he says, “the grey areas become shadier” the deeper you look. His novel was selected as Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month for […]
The book that tells 60,000 stories
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is a great – and little-known – resource for historical novelists. Frances Quinn found the idea for her new book, That Bonesetter Woman, there. As anyone who’s had dealings with the publishing industry will know, one of the things it loves best is ‘the same, but different’; in other […]
The gift of writing historical fiction
Liz Hyder, author of The Gifts, talks about her own writing process and her love of history, and celebrates the “fascinating, brilliant, inspiring joy” of writing historical fiction. Her book has just been published in paperback. I’ve always been interested in history ever since I can remember. I grew up near the edge of Epping […]
One Moonlit Night by Rachel Hore
Forced to leave their family home in London after it is bombed in the Blitz, Maddie and her two young daughters take refuge at Knyghton, the beautiful country house in Norfolk where Maddie’s husband Philip spent the summers of his childhood. But Philip is gone, believed to have been killed in action in northern France. […]
The HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition 2022 longlist
We’re delighted to announce the longlist for the 2022 Historical Writers’ Association Dorothy Dunnett Society Short Story Competition. “2022 has proved another really strong year for the HWA DDS Short Story Competition with stories which took us from Homeric times to the 1980s. All of the stories long listed are fresh, engaging works and our […]
How Roman was Roman Britain?
The Romano-British were the native people living under Rome’s rule in the province of Britannia. But just how Roman were they? Jacquie Rogers looks at the evidence. We all think we know what is meant by Roman Britain — the four centuries, give or take, when our islands were part of the Roman empire. But […]