Walk down any street in London and pause for a moment. To your left and right is an array of doors in different styles and colours. Craftsmen across the centuries have sought to impress you with elegant designs. Owners have added their own finishing touches, a hand-painted pattern here, a Shakespeare door knocker there. The […]
The winners! The HWA Crown Awards 2024
We’re delighted to announce the winners of the 2024 HWA Crown Awards, celebrating the best in recent historical writing, fiction and non-fiction! The winners of the Gold Crown for fiction, the Non-fiction Crown and the Debut Crown were revealed on Wednesday, 20 November at an awards party at St Ethelburga’s Centre in Bishopsgate. We’d like […]
The Battle of Hatfield in 632
17 November is St Hilda’s feast day. Who better to write about the 7th-century Abbess of Whitby’s world than Nicola Griffith, whose novel Menewood, the second in her retelling of Hilda’s (or Hild’s) life, has just been published in paperback? Here she looks at the battle which opens her book: Hatfield, in 632. Menewood is […]
The Liberation of Strasbourg 1944 by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
The occupation and liberation of Strasbourg was described by de Gaulle as ‘one of the most brilliant episodes in our military history’, yet is overshadowed outside France by the Battle of the Bulge. France’s equivalent to Douglas MacArthur’s oath, ‘I shall return,’ General Philippe Leclerc’s Oath of Kufra ‘not to lay down our arms until […]
Paris, 1919: a fragile peace
How, in 1919, could nations come together to begin rebuilding a world shattered by war? The answer seemed to be the Paris Peace Conference, which put together a plan which led to the Treaty of Versailles and what turned out to be a flawed and fragile peace. Flora Johnston’s great-aunt was a typist there, and […]
TV review: The Mirror and the Light
Tracy Borman is a historian and author. She’s also the biographer of Thomas Cromwell, the central figure in the BBC’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light. We’re delighted that she’s reviewed the first programme in the series for us (and relieved that she found it lived up to her expectations). I am […]
Writing about 1066: a male club?
Is writing fiction about 1066, or the Anglo-Saxons in general, the exclusive preserve of a male-only club? Ellen Alpsten was surprised to hear people suggest this. The author of The Last Princess argues that the events leading to the Battle of Hastings merit a ‘female retelling’. In autumn 2024, we celebrate the 958th anniversary of […]
Arm of Eve: Investigating the Thames Torso Murders by Sarah Bax Horton
Jack the Ripper is often called the world’s most notorious unidentified killer, but he was not the first modern serial killer on the streets of London. Before him was another murderer who hunted from the River Thames – one, arguably, more sadistic and mercurial. The Thames Torso Killer has always lurked in the Ripper’s shadow, […]