Is writing fiction about 1066, or the Anglo-Saxons in general, the exclusive preserve of a male-only club? Ellen Alpsten was surprised to hear people suggest this. The author of The Last Princess argues that the events leading to the Battle of Hastings merit a ‘female retelling’. In autumn 2024, we celebrate the 958th anniversary of […]
A writer’s career
This month, the third novel by the bestselling historical action author Griff Hosker to come out in 2024 is published. And it’s only March. Griff has published over 175 novels in all. Intrigued as well as impressed, we asked him to tell us about his career as a writer. I was just 7 years old […]
The curiosities of history
How much research do I need to do? It’s a familiar question for writers of historical fiction. But author Robert Wilton has a confession…
The HWA and Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award: interview with Richard Foreman
Historia talks to Richard Foreman about about the HWA and Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award
How I became a historical fiction writer (I think)
Gill Thompson tells Historia how she became a historical fiction author…
much to her surprise
Writing popular history: Three lessons learned
“Read everything you can. Get to know the place you’re writing about. Know when to stop researching and start writing,” historian and author Eric Lee recommends. “Those are three of the lessons I have learned in the last quarter century as a writer of popular history.” My first book was an oral history of the […]
What counts as historical fiction?
Our resident agony aunt, Dr Darwin, answers a common question: what counts as historical fiction? Dear Dr Darwin, I told my grandmother that I was writing a historical novel set in the Liverpool of the early Beatles, and she laughed so hard she nearly fell off her motorbike. I told my brother the Beatles weren’t […]
In Search of Mercia
Annie Whitehead on research roadblocks, and writing history when the evidence is elusive. I spend my life writing about the characters who inhabited ancient Mercia. The history of this Anglo-Saxon kingdom is full of colourful characters, some familiar – Lady Godiva and Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians – and some not so well-known, but no […]