‘We’re going back … back to Small Heath,’ says a blood-spattered Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy), in the opening episode of Peaky Blinders, Season 4. ‘Back where you belong,’ replies Johnny Dogs (Packy Lee) – he knows, as do we, that Tommy can’t escape his roots. Season 3 of Peaky Blinders was about Tommy’s attempt to […]
Historia Interviews: Beth Underdown
In a new series of interviews Historia editor Katherine Clements chats with the authors shortlisted for the 2017 HWA Crown Awards. First up, Debut Crown nominee Beth Underdown talks about her novel, The Witchfinder’s Sister. The HWA Debut Crown celebrates new voices in historical fiction. Have you always been interested in history? Always. Most of […]
The Beguiled
The Beguiled is Sofia Coppola’s take on the 1966 novel by Thomas P. Cullinan, and an earlier film adaptation by Don Siegal, starring Clint Eastwood. Coppola has a history of exploring female sexuality and power in works like The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette. Now she adds another clever and complex study – one with […]
Historia Interviews: Samuel Ferrer
Samuel Ferrer wrote his debut novel, The Last Gods of Indochine, in the bars of Bangkok, Saigon, Hanoi, the cafes of Laos, in the mountains of Sapa, and on location throughout Cambodia. Inspired by the real life of explorer, Henri Mouhot (1826-1881), the novel centres around Mouhot’s fictitious granddaughter and uses excerpts from the journal that […]
Harlots: Episode One
The opening titles of Harlots pull no punches: It’s 1763, London is booming and one in five women make a living by selling sex. We’re plunged immediately into the vivid world of Margaret Wells’s brothel, as her working girls laugh and bicker over their entries in the latest edition of Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies. […]
Jackie
Just one week after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963, his widow invited Life Magazine journalist, Theodore H. White, to the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port. She had a story to tell. In the resulting piece (which you can read here) White focuses on Jackie Kennedy’s hazy memories of that […]
Historia Interviews: Rory Clements
Best known for the acclaimed John Shakespeare series of historical thrillers, Rory Clements won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award with Revenger and hit the bestseller lists with Holy Spy. His new book, Corpus, is the first in a major new series and is already garnering great reviews. You can win a copy here. Katherine Clements (no […]
To Walk Invisible: BBC’s Brontë Biopic
Screenwriter Sally Wainwright is best known for hard-hitting drama, Happy Valley and ratings hit, Last Tango in Halifax. Kicking off her career with a stint on Emmerdale, she’s found her niche writing, and latterly directing, TV drama set in the North of England. Her work is characterised by down-to-earth storytelling with a big dash of […]