Book Reviews
Click on the links below to read the full article
The personal reign of Mary Queen of Scots is an endless source of fascination to historians and fans of historical mystery alike. The reasons why are obvious: her relatively brief period of rule offers romance, political drama, murder mystery, and high tragedy. I am mindful of Lady Antonia ...
Continuing his passion for sixteenth century history, Steven Veerapen takes the reader on a thrilling adventure with his latest spy novel, The Queen’s Gold. Based on historical figures and events, accompanied with a fast pace and unexpected turns, Veerapen has created a gripping piece of ...
In this lyrically written, highly anticipated novel, E C Fremantle cements her place as one of Britain’s foremost writers of historical fiction. She is to be especially commended for her exploration of periods which are not well covered (her Jacobean The Poison Bed was an instant classic). ...
If you ask someone to describe Henry VIII’s appearance, they will likely be quick to supply an answer: the king was tall, fat, leonine, with a spade-shaped face, piggy eyes, hands insolently on his hips, and gargantuan legs spread wide. They might not, however, know who crafted the image: the ...
Humour and heart-racing tension are brought to the forefront as author Steven Veerapen concludes his Elizabethan spy thriller series with Assassination, a story packed with plot twists amid a compelling and fully realised historical backdrop. Following the journey of English spy and thief Ned ...
Merchants, in the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are ubiquitous. One finds them represented on the stage, for example, in the works of Shakespeare and Jonson (‘let’s see him creep!’). The word itself conjures up a host of senses: the jingling of coins in purses, the ...
The love stories of the Tudors have been fodder for historical fiction for centuries. Few do not know the stories of Henry VIII’s wives, Mary I’s marriage to Philip of Spain, and Queen Elizabeth’s array of courtships and succession of favourites. One might be forgiven for thinking that there is
Casual students of history will know Elizabeth Stuart, queen of Bohemia, by her famous sobriquet – the Winter Queen (a name derived from a jibe against her husband) – or for her minor role in the Gunpowder Plot. Those a little more familiar with the period might recall the famous quote ...
The Elizabethan Mind is a book I’ve awaited with excitement. Some years back, I was fortunate to hear Helen Hackett present her work on what would become this book at a symposium held in honour of my supervisor and friend, Alison Thorne. To my delight, the text not only met but exceeded my ...
Miranda Malins, author of The Puritan Princess, has returned to the Cromwell’s and provided a real treat: a step back in time, to the 1640s, to trace the family’s uneasy rise to power. This time, however, a different Cromwell daughter - Bridget - takes centre stage.The great problem with ...
Miranda Malins, author of The Puritan Princess, has returned to the Cromwell’s and provided a real treat: a step back in time, to the 1640s, to trace the family’s uneasy rise to power. This time, however, a different Cromwell daughter - Bridget - takes centre stage.The great problem with ...
Winston Churchill refuses to die. Through film and television - not least The Crown and Darkest Hour - he reappears, chewing cigars and epitomising an imagined British bulldog spirit. He lives on, too, as an ogrish bogeyman, his appalling racial prejudices now freely scrutinised; and the legend
Short Stories
Click on the links below to read the full article
Another young life lost.
Simon Danforth pictured the boy’s body, lying bloodless and cold on the wooden bench of the coroner’s office. Harry Alwin had been a few years younger than his own twenty-two. Even now, as he looked into Mr Richard Alwin’s face, he pictured it. It was somehow hard to ...
David Starkey is the latest historian to get in on the action of YouTube. Viewers will be familiar with him, of course, from his media presence (on television, radio, and in print); now, he has begun a YouTube series, the scope of which includes English political and social history - with a ...
Author Interview
What prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in?In my case, I was following the old strategy of ‘write what you know’. I’d been researching and teaching this period for years and it seemed fertile ground for trying fiction. Once I knew I wanted to write about Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, the ...
Franny Moyle, welcome to Aspects of History. You’ve written a fantastic book, The King's Painter: The Life and Times of Hans Holbein, but when did you first “discover” Holbein, and what encouraged you to write ...
Edmond Smith, what inspired you to write about these early entrepreneurs, the subject of your new book, Merchants?My PhD set out to explore how individual investors shaped the infamous East India Company, but the more I dug into this, the more links I discovered with other parts
Nadine Akkerman, when first approaching this project, what was your understanding of Elizabeth Stuart and what, as a biographer, drew you to her?My first tussle with Elizabeth Stuart came about when I heard of her love for the theatre – I teach English literature, and started looking through her correspondence in the hope of finding something new about Shakespeare. As it turned
S.G.MacLean, The ‘Damian Seeker’ series marked a departure from your other novels in that you tackle the aftermath of the wars between the kingdoms. What drew you to the Cromwellian period?I came to it by accident. My first series was set in Scotland in the years preceding the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and my editor was very keen that I should send the main character ...
I’m curious as to whether your agent and/or publisher were enthusiastic about 
Helen Hackett, The Elizabethan Mind is the product of an enormous amount of research, comprising study of a variety of texts, from plays to printed prose works, to poems, and of course dramas. I’m curious as to whether you think the medium can tell us something about the popularity (or otherwise) of ...
In this Suzannah Lipscomb Interview, she discusses her latest book, Voices of Nîmes, which has brought to life the women of 16th and early 17th century Languedoc through the cases of consistories - moral courts. Through impressive archival research, we now know what women went through close to a daily basis, and Suzannah
A Dangerous Trade was the first in your Queen’s ...