The Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) has great pleasure in revealing the 2025 Crown Awards shortlists, celebrating the best in historical writing, fiction and non-fiction, published during 2024–2025. There are three awards categories — HWA Gold Crown, HWA Non-fiction Crown, and HWA Debut Crown — and six shortlisted books in each category. The books shortlisted for […]
Philip of France, medieval England’s greatest enemy
England’s greatest enemy during the medieval period was (of course!) French: King Philip II, also called Philip Augustus. Astute and cunning, he played his Plantagenet rivals against one another and, as the historian Catherine Hanley says, became Europe’s most powerful monarch. France was one of the great power-houses of medieval Europe, and much of the […]
Nemesis: Medieval England’s Greatest Enemy by Catherine Hanley
Philip II, also called Philip Augustus, ruled France with an iron fist for over 40 years, expanding its borders and increasing its power. For his entire reign his counterpart on the English throne was a member of the Plantagenet dynasty, and Philip took them all on: Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, John and Henry III. […]
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 […]
Joanna Plantagenet, the lionhearted woman
Joanna Plantagenet, Queen of Sicily, later Countess of Toulouse, was every bit as lionhearted as her more famous brother Richard I. As her biographer, Catherine Hanley, says, she “led an extraordinary life full of adventure and danger”, the more so because she was a woman. Joanna’s eventful life also illustrates many of the major issues […]
Stoke Field, 1487: The ‘forgotten’ battle of the Wars of the Roses
Ethan Bale looks at the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487, a ‘forgotten’ fight which finally secured the throne of England for Henry VII and the Tudor dynasty. It’s the perfect pub quiz gotcha: What is considered to be the last battle of the Wars of the Roses? If you said “Bosworth Field” you’d be […]
To have and to hold: pawns in the medieval marriage game
Anne O’Brien’s novels imagine the lives of medieval women, almost silent in the records of their times, but important pieces in the games of diplomacy, dynasty and war. She tells Historia about the royal women who married for duty – and those who defied their families to enter a risky love match. Women from royal […]
A Tapestry of Treason by Anne O’Brien
1399: Constance of York, Lady Despenser, proves herself more than a mere observer in the devious intrigues of her magnificently dysfunctional family, the House of York. Surrounded by power-hungry men, including her aggressively self-centred husband Thomas and ruthless siblings Edward and Richard, Constance places herself at the heart of two treasonous plots against King Henry […]