Rani Selvarajah’s novel Savage Beasts takes the story of Medea and reimagines it set in 18th-century India. She tells Historia how she wanted to explore the treatment of women and of foreigners under colonialism; universal themes, both in myth and in history. I first studied the play Medea at school and was instantly mesmerised by […]
Finding empathy – the complexities of writing Robert Clive
How can an author find empathy in a historical figure who is necessary to their story, but whose ‘dark character’ we look back on with distaste? Diana Preston tells Historia how she found a way to write about Robert Clive ‘of India’ in all his complexity. The decision to write a novel centring on Robert […]