Charlie Chaplin rose from the hard streets of Victorian London to become one of the most beloved comedians of all time. With his threadbare jacket, baggy trousers and puzzled expression, Chaplin’s ‘Little Tramp’ alter ego was shaped by the city of his childhood — a place of ribald variety shows and hard drinking, radical politics […]
The Man Who Stopped the Sultan by Edoardo Albert
Throughout the 16th century, wars raged across Europe as kings and republics jostled for wealth and power. Yet one man exceeded all these medieval princes of Christendom: Suleiman the Magnificent. As ruler of the Ottoman Empire, he governed 25 million people from Constantinople, his realm stretching from Persia to the Atlantic Ocean. Turning his gaze […]
How an engineer stopped Sultan Suleiman from conquering Rhodes
How could an engineer stop the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, and his huge army from conquering the Knights Hospitaller on their island of Rhodes? By being a superb underground warfare tactician, Edoardo Albert explains. This is the story behind his new book, The Man Who Stopped the Sultan. The drum began to chime. This […]
Headhunters of the Naga Hills
Vaseem Khan’s latest murder mystery is set in Nagaland, in the north-eastern region of India. He writes about the history of the area once known as the Naga Hills and the tribes who lived there – people who were, until fairly recently, headhunters. In the far north-eastern corner of India is the state of Nagaland, […]
16th-century Seville: Spain’s criminal capital
Seville in the 16th century was a city of wealth, the arts and international trade. But, says Matthew Carr, author of The Emperor of Seville, it was also Spain’s criminal capital, winning the nickname of the Great Babylon. He tells Historia how Seville embodied the paradox at the heart of Spain’s Golden Age. History tends […]
Travelling to Weimar Berlin – in 1930 and the 2020s
Fiona Veitch Smith travels to Weimar Berlin in 1930, using her antique Baedeker guidebook, and finds that the nearly 100-year-old book can still help her find the places she’s researching in the 2020s. In previous articles for Historia I outlined how I use vintage fashion and vintage guide books as research for my neo-Golden Age […]
The fall and rise of fascism
Catherine Hokin, author of The Girl Who Told the Truth, reflects on the rise and fall of Oswald Mosley’s fascist movement in England, how fascism continued after the end of the Second World War, and the lessons history can teach us. “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” That quote from […]
Historical books to look out for in 2026
Welcome to Historia’s most popular regular feature, our round-up of historical books published by members of the Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) to look out for this year. In 2026, there are more than 110 books so far — historical fiction, history, and biography. They range from Ancient Greece and Rome to the mid-20th century via the Viking […]