H for History Posts

As a historical novelist, you’re always coming across interesting nuggets – things that you could put in novels, be they set pieces, events, characters or even lines of dialogue. (I wrote about this in a […]

Set amid the turmoil of the Irish Civil War and the brittle glamour of 1920s London, The Glorious Guinness Girls is inspired by one of the most fascinating family dynasties in the world – an unforgettable […]

What inspired you to write A Tomb With A View?   There is a tumbledown graveyard on the hill behind my house. One day, walking in there, I chanced upon a grave, half hidden in […]

Everyone remembers the Battle of Trafalgar and indeed ‘Trafalgar Day’ is celebrated every October 21 with commemorative dinners and ceremonies around the UK. But in the course of research for my latest Kydd tale Balkan […]

If I ask if you have heard of the British Army’s campaign in Abyssinia, to free European prisoners taken by Emperor Tewodros II, then I suspect many of you would look rather perplexed. However, if […]

Read an exclusive extract from the opening of The Silver Collar, Antonia Hodgson’s new Thomas Hawkins adventure. Read the extract here.     Autumn, 1728. Life is good for Thomas Hawkins and Kitty Sparks. The […]

As Katheryn Howard: The Tainted Queen is written wholly from Katheryn’s point of view, the reader never gets to see the reaction of Katheryn’s husband, Henry VIII, to her fall from grace. We see only […]

During the English High Middle Ages of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there was a succession of foreign queen consorts.  Some were honoured as the mothers of kings; others were also mothers of kings, […]

Ahead of the publication of The Silver Collar, bestselling creator of the Thomas Hawkins novels Antonia Hodgson updates us all on her antihero’s story so far…   The Silver Collar is the fourth book in the […]

  I’ve always been fascinated by social history and listening to stories about how the past has impacted different individual lives and those of future generations. I guess doing a history degree, followed by a […]

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, […]

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 […]