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...
David Boyle, the author behind numerous well-received historical and historical fiction books, including Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma and Operation Primrose, brings us a thoughtful and detailed account of the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, and his...
Ivan Menchell, can I first just congratulate you on the critical and commercial success of the show. It takes a village of course, but you and the village must be justly proud. What initially attracted you to the story of Bonnie & Clyde - and then how did you...
In his new book, The Story of the World in 100 Moments, Neil Oliver has chosen events covering a million years to understand how human history is linked. Justin Doherty met up with Neil recently, and they discussed the new book, what inspired it, and the subject of...
Coronation is the ultimate pocket-sized companion to what has become an exclusively British preoccupation, (the last European crowning was in 1922). There is no better guide to Elizabeth's 1953 bonanza than royal biographer Hugo Vickers whose up close and personal...
In his latest biography on royalty, Matthew Dennison has written an empathetic, and balanced, life story of our Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth. His book is not just another narrative of her life; rather, an informed analysis of her personality, the pressures and...
Barney White-Spunner, was your third book, having written previously about the military, why did you want to write Berlin? I first went to Berlin as a soldier in the 1980s so well before the Wall came down. It made an immediate impact. It was not like anywhere I had...
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...
Can History Be Saved? Vladimir Putin is not only presiding over a massive invasion of a neighbouring country, he is dictating how Russians should understand past events—not just over Ukraine but long before, ordering huge revisions in what history is taught in schools...
The Children Left Behind is the fourth – and penultimate – instalment in her Shilling Grange Children’s Home series, which centres on the eponymous Suffolk orphanage in the aftermath of World War Two. Like the previous books in the series, The Children Left...
