Louise Morrish looks at two courageous women who defied the authorities and went on the warpath during the First World War: one, literally, as a soldier, and one as a doctor. Louisa Garrett Anderson and Dorothy Lawrence inspired her new book, Women of War. In 1914, a surgeon and a soldier went to war — […]
The hidden stories of the First World War
When Lucy Steeds was researching her debut novel, The Artist, she realised that writing about art in the 1920s was impossible without an understanding of how the First World War had left its mark — physical or mental — on everyone who lived through it. One powerful source was nurses’ testimonies. Here she writes about […]
Licensed brothels in France during the First World War
Alec Marsh writes about the licensed brothels used by British troops in France during the First World War. They’re part of the background to his new novel, Cut and Run. One of the surprising and little known things about the Great War was the involvement, to a degree at least, of the British state in […]
The Guinea Pig Club – a WWII RAF pilot elite
The Guinea Pig Club was formed in 1941 by a group of remarkable RAF pilots, men who survived both life-altering injuries during action and the surgery, by a charismatic virtuoso doctor, which followed. They were an elite, modest but courageous, whose stories inspired LP Fergusson to write her latest novel. The Fever Box is a […]
The stigma of illegitimacy: forced adoption
Mary Chamberlain’s new novel, The Lie, exposes the truth about the stark choice faced by pregnant unmarried women before contraception was widely available. It’s all so different now, we think. But, she asks, will the rolling back of abortion rights in America revive the stigma of illegitimacy — and the practice of forced adoptions — […]
Dr Kahn and the Victorians’ fascination with anatomy
Essie Fox writes about the Victorian obsession with human anatomy — often as grotesques — and the bizarre tale of one museum owner whose success resisted scandals and attempts to close his establishment for years. It’s part of the background to The Fascination, her latest book. My new novel, The Fascination, is a Victorian gothic […]
Witch’s Mummy: corpses and cure-alls
A powder made of corpses helped cause the execution of two of the North Berwick Witches at the end of the 16th century. Yet ‘mummy’ was used as a cure-all by royalty. How did ground-up dead bodies come to play a part in early modern medicine? Naomi Kelsey, author of The Burnings, explains. On 28 […]
Invasion, inoculation and publication: when your book becomes unexpectedly topical
By the time Lucy Ward’s first book, about Catherine II (‘the Great’) of Russia and the fight for inoculation against smallpox, was published, her subject had become unexpectedly topical. Covid and the invasion of Ukraine had turned it from a slightly niche story to one which resonated strongly with our own times. And the echoes […]