Father-to-son succession wasn’t necessarily the way for Roman Emperors. Far from it, says LJ Trafford, who draws on research for her book Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors to illustrate how not to become a successful Roman Emperor. Buying the position when you’re drunk? Agreeing because a mob of thugs has a blade to your throat? Probably […]
Christmas reading 2023 – historical books to give or ask for
We asked 13 well-loved authors to each recommend a couple of historical books for Christmas 2023 to give, receive, or treat yourself with. There’s fiction and non-fiction, most published recently, with a few old favourites as well. We hope these suggestions help to inspire your Christmas reading. Tracy Borman Henry VIII: The Heart and the […]
The winners! The HWA Crown Awards 2023
We’re delighted to announce the winners of the 2023 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, 22 November at an awards party at Crypt on the Green in Clerkenwell. We’d […]
The Protestant Wind
The course of English, and later British, history could have been changed on several occasions by fleets setting out from southern European countries if it hadn’t been for a number of weather events which have come to be known, collectively, as the ‘Protestant Wind’. Maggie Craig explains. The Protestant Wind is the name given to […]
Roman Andalusia
Alistair Tosh has a lifelong interest in Roman history and a love of Andalusia. When he began writing historical fiction it was natural to combine the two in his Edge of Empire series. Here he looks at the history of Roman Andalusia and at some of the places he features in his books. Warrior, the […]
Why I started a podcast – and what I learnt
Kate Thompson, the author and podcaster, looks at why she began From the Library with Love, the podcast series in which she interviews Britain’s wartime generation. What lessons has she learned during the past six months? I was given a piece of advice recently by a female writer far wiser than me: we all need […]
Human trafficking or slave trading? A Roman industry
In Ancient Rome, slavery was seen as perfectly acceptable, and seizing and trafficking other humans was a useful trade supplying a demand. But there were circumstances in which the Roman authorities tried, more or less successfully, to clamp down on it. Jacquie Rogers examines the evidence. Trafficking is ‘dealing or trading in something illegal’ according […]
The voices of the Second World War
How do you bring the voices of a period such as the Second World War to life for podcast listeners – without using cliches such as air raid sirens and Churchillian clips? Ros Taylor writes about a “remarkable” source for what people were really thinking about during WWII, and how she made archive material into […]