In the first monograph to fully examine the intersecting networks of Jacobites and travellers to the continent, Filet considers how small states used official diplomacy and deployed soft power — embodied by educational academies — to achieve foreign policy goals. This work uses little-known archival materials to explain how and why certain small states secretly […]
Mythica by Emily Hauser
Contrary to perceptions built up over three millennia, ancient history is not all about men – and it’s not only men’s stories that deserve to be told. In Mythica Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world’s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, […]
The real women who made the Greek myths
What can history tell us about the lives of women at the time of the Trojan War? Emily Hauser’s new book examines how recent advances in archaeology and science reveal a surprising amount about the real women who made the Greek myths. ‘Myth’. The very word in English appears to mean something that’s not true […]
Charles II’s Portuguese Queen by Susan Abernethy
Catherine of Braganza has regularly been referred to as ‘the forgotten queen’, and there is much truth in this statement. Following her death in 1705, a fully detailed biography in English remained unwritten until 1915. The last major bio published about her was in Portuguese in 1941 and it has never been translated into English. Despite her sheltered […]
The magic and science of 18th-century Wales
Wales in the 18th century was a land where old magical beliefs and new science met, clashed, mixed and evolved, says Susan Stokes-Chapman, author of The Shadow Key. Her book explores the possibilities of this tension – and is also a “love letter to Wales and the Gothic”. The 18th century was a time of […]
Good Trouble by Forest Issac Jones
This book shows the strong connection between the Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Catholic Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland – specifically the influence of the Montgomery to Selma march on the 1969 Belfast to Derry march — through oral history, based on numerous interviews of events leading up to […]
Writing and researching naval fiction
Researching naval history at the time of Nelson involves taking in a lot of technical details. But, as Katie Daysh points out, when writing naval fiction, character must come first. The Age of Sail, typically seen as between the mid-16th century into the mid-19th, has been a popular subject in fiction since the time of […]
Lost Heirs of the Medieval Crown by JF Andrews
When William the Conqueror died in 1087 he left the throne of England to William Rufus… his second son. The result was an immediate war as Rufus’s elder brother Robert fought to gain the crown he saw as rightfully his; this conflict marked the start of 400 years of bloody disputes as the English monarchy’s […]