Who were the real hero(ine)s of the Blitz? “The wartime mothers of the East End,” one former doctor, who saved many lives, told author Kate Thompson. Kate writes about the lessons she learned from interviewing East London women who’d survived the bombs: the daughters of childminders, abortionists, money-lenders; the costermonger, the butcher, the singer. These […]
The challenges of researching working class lives
If you want to write fiction or non-fiction based around the court of Henry VIII or of Queen Victoria, you’ll have plenty of sources to draw on. Researching working class lives is more challenging. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, argues Esther Freeman. When writing my book – Great Women of London – one […]
Fenwomen by Mary Chamberlain
Mary Chamberlain’s vivid social and oral history of an isolated village in the Cambridgeshire Fens was the first book ever published by Virago. Told through the voices and lives of women, whose memories span over one hundred years, it provides a unique portrait of a working-class, rural community where intermarriage was common, most inhabitants lived […]
The Barbed-Wire University by Midge Gillies
For most Allied prisoners of war, there were no heroic escapes through secret tunnels – the reality was a constant battle against boredom and brutality. Written when it was still just possible to find men alive who could tell their extraordinary tale, and republished now with a substantial afterword, Midge Gillies’s book casts a new […]
Blitz Kids: celebrating the 80th anniversary of VE Day
On 8 May, 2025, it’s the 80th anniversary of VE Day. To mark the day, Duncan Barrett remembers the stories of the Blitz Kids, told to him by eyewitnesses who, as children, lived through the bombing of Britain’s cities during the Second World War. It’s 2012 and my partner Nuala and I are in the […]
Blitz Kids by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi
When the Second World War began, there were 10 million children living in Britain. Many were evacuated to the countryside, but others stayed behind and witnessed the Blitz close-up in cities around the UK. Blitz Kids tells the remarkable true stories of children who spent their nights in cold, cramped air-raid shelters, hearing the rumble […]
In search of a Holocaust survivor’s past
2025 marks 80 years since the liberation of the Third Reich’s camps. This significant anniversary will likely be the last in which survivors are still alive to tell their stories. When writer Kate Thompson went to visit 95-year-old Renee Salt in her London home she had no idea of the journey of discovery it would […]
Historia interview: Luke Pepera
Luke Pepera’s debut Motherland: A Journey through 500,000 years of African Culture and Identity is a ground-breaking exploration of Africa’s uniquely long history and diverse cultures, interwoven with Luke’s experiences of growing up in a Ghanaian family. Luke talks to novelist Carolyn Kirby about the genesis of his remarkable book. CK: Motherland is such a […]