The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Welcome to Aspects of History, David. Could you provide our readers with an outline of your latest book, The Coming of the Railway: A New Global History 1750-1850? The book sets out to trace the transformation of a mechanical handling system into the main overland...
Welcome back to Aspects of History, Steve. How hard was it to dig through nearly a thousand years of myth building to get to the truth about what was really happening with the Assassins and the Templars? Thanks Adam. Great question. There's really two aspects to this....
Welcome back to Aspects of History, Jim. The Bratinsky Affair, our Fiction Book of the Month, combines murder mystery, espionage thriller, and historical fiction. What first inspired the book, and how did the story evolve from that earliest conception? Serendipity...
Hello Steven – thanks for talking to us a few years on from the publication of The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I, our Book Club pick for June. In the book, you set out to strip away the myths around the first Stuart King of England – what was the...
Philip, welcome to Aspects of History. Congratulations on the upcoming release of Empire’s Witness: A Soldier’s Secret War Diary 1942–45. What were your memories of your grandfather, Corporal Day, prior to beginning this project, and how and why did his “quiet life...
Welcome, Steven, to Aspects of History. What was it that first led you into the study of architecture and cultural history? Which came first? I was always fascinated by British history and British architecture from my earliest years, though I’m not sure why: no-one in...
As I understand it, Blood Feud is the first book in your second trilogy (Rebellion). Set the scene for us. That’s right. We begin in a small village (Acum or Acomb as it is today) in the far north of England, situated close to Hadrian’s Wall and the River Tyne. The...
Hello Debbie. Members of Parliament behaving badly is a particularly fruitful topic these days! What was it that led you to write about these historical rogues? I was researching an academic paper looking at MPs in James I’s first English parliament, to see if you...
Welcome back, Giles – we’re exactly two years on from the release of The Stalin Affair, and that question of the nature of diplomacy between allies seems ever more relevant in recent weeks and months in 2026. The ‘impossible alliance’ you discuss between Franklin D....
Let me begin, Rory, by offering my congratulations on the publication of Offa: King of the Mercians. A truly magnificent piece of work. The jacket notes refer to this book as a ‘breathtaking piece of historical investigation’ (with which I cannot argue); how would you...
