The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Peter Tonkin, can you first tell us about your latest Poley novel? Shadow of Poison follows Queen’s Intelligencer Robert Poley from the aftermath of his unmasking of the Babington Plot in 1586, through the next eight years as he works to counter other, secret schemes...
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of Rising TideMunich Wolf, by Rory Clements is set in 1935 Munich. When the body of a young English socialite is found, Kripo detective Sebastian Wolff is called in to solve the politically sensitive case. The...
Our hapless hero, son of the king’s late black trumpeter John Blanke, is once again pressed into service as a spy by Cardinal Wolsey, the second most powerful figure in the land. Wolsey is pre-occupied with preparations for the forthcoming opening of Parliament at...
It is generally accepted that the European Renaissance began in Italy. However, as this developed south of the Alps a historical transformation of similar magnitude began taking place in northern Europe. This ‘Other Renaissance’ was initially centred on the city of...
As a former policewoman, Blessin Adams is well aware of the human cost of murder. In Great and Horrible News, this moving nonfiction study, she investigates the crimes that shook Tudor and Stuart England. In doing so, she approaches her cases forensically: and what a...
Books of 2023 from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of The Dardanelles ConspiracyMy book of the year is SAS Forged in Hell. The next instalment of Damien Lewis’ WW II odyssey with the men of 1 SAS, as they become the ‘tip of the spear’ in the invasion of Sicily...
It is estimated that one in six people in England have Huguenot ancestry. Yet the Huguenots (Protestants who were largely artisans and professionals) integrated so seamlessly into their adopted countries that, generations on, it is easy to forget the circumstances...
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of The Dardanelles ConspiracyQueen High by CJ Carey is the sequel to Widow Land and a counter factual/dystopian novel; in a similar vein to 1984, Fatherland and Brave New World. It is set in a 1950s Britain that...
Peter Tonkin, can you first tell us about your latest Poley novel - and who Poley is? Robert Poley (who appears on the historical record between 1568 and 1602) is one of the three men in the room with Christopher Marlowe on the evening of Wednesday, 30th May 1593 when...
Shadow of Treason, the latest addition to Peter Tonkin’s The Queen’s Intelligencer series, offers a thrilling insight into the Protestant and Catholic divide during the reign of James I. A discord so deep that a fervent group of Catholics would assemble and attempt to...
