H for History Blog
WHO WAS MARGARET DOUGLAS, THE LOST TUDOR PRINCESS?
Royal Tudor blood ran in her veins. Her mother was a queen, and she herself was the granddaughter, niece, cousin and grandmother of monarchs. Some thought she should be queen of England. Beautiful and tempestuous, […]
Read MoreExtract from Code Name Hélène – inspired by a true story
Hélène BENSON MILITARY AIRFIELD, ENGLAND February 29th, 1944 I have gone by many names. Some of them are real— I was given four at birth alone— but most are carefully constructed personas to […]
Read MoreEleni Kyriacou reveals the family inspiration for her debut novel She Came To Stay.
Every family has a story to tell, and I always knew that the roots of my tale were embedded in the 1950s. This was when my parents came to the UK from Cyprus. […]
Read MoreDon’t Go to the Grove: Lindsey Davis on the inspiration behind The Grove of the Caesars
The Grove of the Caesars, was intended to explore gardens – a regular haunt of serial killers of course! I pay attention to both, but I prefer an oblique approach, if only to […]
Read MoreA Q & A with Maggie O’Farrell to introduce HAMNET
What originally inspired you to write Hamnet? When I was studying ‘Hamlet’ at school, my teacher mentioned in passing that Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet, who died several years before the play was written. […]
Read MoreIs the Covid 19 pandemic a modern-day Black Death?
The short answer is no. Not at all. And yet, when reading some newspaper articles in the last few days, I’ve seen this crisis described as a modern day plague, with all sorts of […]
Read MoreFinished The Mirror and the Light? Read on to delve deeper…
Many historical fiction fans in their thousands have this month been reading The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel, the final book in her remarkable recreation of the life of Thomas Cromwell that, in […]
Read MoreAn extract from Gretchen Berg’s THE OPERATOR
Gretchen Berg highlights a moment in her novel which stunned America in 1938… 1938 Little Charlotte was sleeping in her crib in the bedroom while Edward and Vivian listened to The Chase and […]
Read MoreThe real-life history behind The Slaughterman’s Daughter by Yaniv Iczkovits…
To celebrate the publication of The Slaughterman’s Daughter, we asked author Yaniv Iczkovits to tell us about the real-life history behind his sprawling historical epic. Growing up in Israel, I always felt […]
Read MoreRead an extract of The Grove of the Caesars by Lindsey Davis
Private Investigator Flavia Albia is back in Lindsey Davis’s next gripping and witty mystery set in Ancient Rome, The Grove of the Caesars. Publishing in April 2020, we are delighted to share a sneak-peek extract […]
Read MoreRead an extract from the start of The Bear Pit by S.G MacLean
In the 4th book of The Seeker series, Captain Seeker is back in London, on the trail of an assassin preparing to strike at the heart of Oliver Cromwell’s Republic. Take a sneak-peek at the […]
Read MoreTrue or False? A Katheryn Howard Quiz
For the publication of the fifth book in the bestselling Six Tudor Queens series Alison Weir has created this special True or False quiz about Katheryn Howard. Click below to take the quiz! A […]
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