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 […]
Review: After The Flood by Alec Marsh
Mark Ellis reviews Alec Marsh’s After The Flood and finds it “excellent and gripping”. Read on to see what he enjoyed so much. After The Flood is the fourth of Alec Marsh’s imaginative 1930s ripping yarns featuring the unlikely heroic duo of Drabble and Harris. I very much enjoyed the first three books as I […]
A Woman of Opinion by Sean Lusk
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu longs for adventure, freedom and love, believing that only by truly living can she ever escape the stalking crow of Death… An aristocratic woman in 18th-century England is expected to act in certain ways. But Mary has never let society’s expectations stifle her: she writes celebrated poetry and articles advocating for […]
How Mary Wortley Montagu and other great 18th-century women were forgotten
Diminished, disparaged, derided. That’s how Sean Lusk describes the fate of Mary Wortley Montagu and other great women of the 18th century. He looks at how they came to be forgotten. I had not intended to write a novel about Mary Wortley Montagu. Her Turkish Embassy Letters were the inspiration for the character of Aunt […]