Charles de Gaulle famously said it was impossible to govern a country with 246 different cheeses. And perhaps he was right. Every French cheese carries an essence of the place where it’s made — its history, identity and landscape. Sometimes that’s a physical thing, as the hard texture of Comté echoes its rugged Alpine home. […]
How to serve a Tudor feast
Daniel Pursglove, the reluctant spy at the centre of KJ Maitland’s crime-thriller series, is back. In Traitor in the Ice he’s sent to Battle Abbey, seat of the Roman Catholic Montague family, to find a murderer in a nest of suspected priests. Karen tells Historia about the strange rituals that surrounded serving meals in this […]
Gladiator sweat and leech hair dye; how to survive in Ancient Rome
When Pen & Sword Books approached historian and novelist LJ Trafford about writing a book they described as ‘Horrible Histories for Grownups’, set in Ancient Rome, she accepted with pleasure. As readers of her books – and her Historia pieces – know, she’s an expert in the bizarre, ridiculous and downright disgusting details of Roman […]