Caroline Shenton, author of National Treasures, tells how veterans of the First World War stepped out of its ‘Long Shadow’ to help save Britain’s art collections during the Second World War. My latest book, National Treasures. Saving the Nation’s Art in World War Two, tells the true story of the adventures of our national collections […]
National Treasures by Caroline Shenton
As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London’s museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation’s highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely […]
The crown: secrets for success
Tracy Borman, author of Crown & Sceptre, writes about how English, and later British, monarchs have, on the whole, held onto the crown with a great deal of success. What’s the secret of royal continuity? In February 2022, Queen Elizabeth II will celebrate her Platinum Jubilee – by far the longest reign of any British […]
On the trail of an emperor, a rebel, and a lion
To research his latest book, historian Lindsay Powell set out on the trail of the rebel leader who, in AD132, led an uprising of the Jewish people against the Roman Emperor. Who was Bar Kokhba? And what caused the war? For my latest book I wanted to tell the true story of the consequential clash […]
Review: Defenders of the Norman Crown by Sharon Bennett Connolly
Who were the Warenne Earls of Surrey? As good as forgotten now, for 300 years they were at the heart of English history, as medieval historian and novelist John Paul Davis learned when reading Defenders of the Norman Crown, Sharon Bennett Connolly’s history of the once-prominent family. He reviews it for Historia. Defenders of the […]
Bar Kokhba by Lindsay Powell
In AD132 the bloody struggle between two strong-willed leaders over who would rule a nation began. One was Hadrian, the cosmopolitan ruler of the vast Roman Empire, then at its zenith, who some regarded as divine; the other was Shim’on, a Jewish military leader in a district of a minor province, who some believed to […]
The link between Scotland and the Inuit
Elisabeth Gifford writes about the link between Scottish whalers and the Inuit people living on the Arctic Atlantic coasts, which is a major theme in her latest book, A Woman Made of Snow. The Arctic Bar in Dundee is an unprepossessing pub with a modern frontage, but inside the dusty harpoon guns and photographs of […]
Should historical authors feel guilt when they write real people as antiheroes?
What responsibility has an author of historical fiction towards real people who they write as antiheroes in a novel? Should authors feel guilty about how they portray them? AJ West, whose debut novel, The Spirit Engineer, takes people who have living descendants as its close inspiration, considers this dilemma. I don’t believe in ghosts, though […]