H for History Posts

  Although torture was officially illegal in England, some prisoners in the Tower did suffer interrogation on the rack and by other cruel methods, such as the thumbscrews, the boot or the Scavenger’s Daughter, an […]

A Pact with Satan to Drive out the Devil August 1939–June 1941   Historians have been prone to link together Adolf Hitler, Germany’s Führer, and Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s communist tsar, as the twentieth […]

Today on the blog, we have author Emily Mayhew with us. Emily talks about how she simply started writing about people facing extraordinary challenges around the world, and how that developed into her upcoming book […]

‘Write something,’ they said. ‘Tell us what fascinates you about the Tower of Babel.’   I didn’t much care for the way they were fingering the electrodes at the time so, as always, I made […]

Maundy Thursday in Sweden was thought to be the day when witches stole brooms and livestock and used them to fly through the night sky to the legendary island of Blåkulla where the Devil held […]

Publishing 1st April, The Deception of Harriet Fleet is an atmospheric Victorian chiller set in brooding County Durham. In this exclusive blog post for H for History, author Helen Scarlett shares with us how the […]

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 […]

Katharine Parr was so more than the wife who ‘survived’. A passionate woman, unusually well educated for her time, she was ardent reformer and the author of three books – the first woman in England […]

Prologue Berlin, 19 December 1939   The Christmas party had not long begun when Gerda Korzeny and her escort arrived at half past eight that evening. The snow was deep and they kicked the ice […]

With publication of the sixth book in her Six Tudor Queens series in 2021, Alison Weir introduces Henry’s last wife, Katharine Parr.   Of Henry VIII’s six wives, Katharine Parr was so much more than […]

The Communist’s Daughter is the story of Katia, a young woman has grown up amongst the ruins of the once mighty Berlin, now shattered by Allied bombs. In their tiny, freezing flat, Katia’s father teaches […]

When writing this book, I was unable to use most of the vast amount of research I did on Katheryn Howard’s fall because it was written entirely from her viewpoint and she was kept very […]