Catherine Hokin reviews The Good Death by SD Sykes and finds it “a book to get lost in” and a story for our times. The Good Death is the fifth book in SD Sykes’s 14th-century Oswald de Lacy series of which I have been a fan since book one. I remain a staunch fan with […]
The Good Death by SD Sykes
1370: Oswald de Lacy was not always Lord of the Manor, or even meant to be. The third son, he was sent off to become a novice monk. Now, with winter closing in on Somershill, his wife flirting with their houseguest, his sister sniping from the sidelines and his mother still ruling his life even […]
A Plague on your Business by Michael Jecks: part 2
Historia’s serialisation of A Plague on your Business by Michael Jecks continues with the second and final part. This is an exclusive extract from By the Sword, the new HWA collection of short stories set in the medieval period. The cook was a lugubrious, scrawny fellow, like a man whodid not enjoy his own food. […]
A Plague on your Business by Michael Jecks: part 1
Historia is delighted to publish an exclusive extract from By the Sword, the new HWA collection of short stories set in the medieval period. This is part one of Michael Jecks’s story, A Plague on your Business. Part two follows in a few days. The body was wrapped at last. He had carefully washed her, […]
Historia interview: Alis Hawkins
Alis Hawkins writes fiction based in two centuries and two places: England in the 14th century and West Wales in the 19th. But, as she tells Historia, shuttling between the two is easier than you might think. Congratulations on The Black and the White being published! Tell us a bit about your latest novel. My […]
The Black and the White by Alis Hawkins
England, 1349 The Black Death is tearing through the country and those not yet afflicted are living in fear. Martin Collyer wakes up in his family’s charcoaling hut in the Forest of Dean to find his father dead on the bed beside him, half-sewn into his shroud. As Martin’s most recent memory is of being […]
The Bone Fire by SD Sykes
1361. Plague has returned to England – thirteen years after the devastation of The Black Death. As destruction advances towards his estate in Kent, Oswald de Lacy leads his family to the safety of a remote castle in the marshes – where his friend Godfrey is preparing a fortress to survive the coming disaster. The […]
Transubstantiation. And why it matters (Honestly. It does)
Author SD Sykes tells Historia how researching a 14th-century dispute over church doctrine started her on the path that led to her latest Oswald de Lacy novel, The Bone Fire. When my son started his senior education in 2008 at a Catholic school, we dutifully attended the first family mass as part of our introduction […]