The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
As Secrets of the Italian Island opens, Mia, a 32-year-old researcher, is grieving the recent death of her grandmother, Lucy, who raised Mia all by herself. As Mia goes through her grandmother’s things in preparation for possibly selling the house, she comes across...
Russian War Crimes (1837-1864) In 1837, the former Decembrist revolutionary, Nikolai Lorer, was serving on the frontline in Russia’s war in the Caucasus. Demoted from major to private, he had been sent to Circassia, a small, independent country in the north, on the...
Persia to Greece: Luxury & Power at the British Museum When the Spartan general Pausanias came across Xerxes’ tent, leant to the commander Mardonius, after the victory over the Persians at Plataea in 479BC, according to Herodotus: He commanded the bakers and chefs...
At 23:15 hours on 5 June 1944, a broadcast was made from the BBC in London. It was the second part of the poem Chanson d’Automne - “Blessent mon coeur, d’une langueur, monotone” (“wound my heart with a monotonous languor”). Upon hearing this, Resistance leaders in...
I write two strands of fiction in parallel: historical novels, usually concerning espionage in the 20th century, and modern-day crime novels set in Iceland. Usually, I enjoy keeping these two strands separate, but every now and then I cannot resist the urge to let...
Food & Class Is it true that pineapples were so fashionable and expensive that they were hired out for Victorian parties? Alexis Soyer, the celebrity chef and philanthropist of Victorian London, delighted in retailing a rumour that the same “pine” was spotted...
The eighteenth century - its art and its manners, have always absorbed me. Some years ago when I was researching British artists’ portraits of black men and women and children for an article in a learned journal, I needed to go no further it so happened than to look...
Britain is blessed with a cornucopia of ancient Roman sites and I have had the opportunity to visit many of them, both in researching for my novels and just for fun. From the ramparts of Scotland’s many sheep-grazed, turf covered forts and camps to the World Heritage...
The story of Bonnie and Clyde has been told in plenty of books (some more salacious than accurate it seems). Interest in the colourful criminals was revived through the superb 1967 film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway (there is also an underrated film called...
The Island of Extraordinary Captives Marjan Rawicz surveyed the crowd gathered on the terraced lawn in front of his grand piano. Rawicz was used to giving well-attended performances at illustrious venues: during the past few years the forty-two-year-old musician had...
