Home » Feminist History

Feminist History

Fiction Book of the Month: Lucy Ashe on Clara & Olivia

Fiction Book of the Month: Lucy Ashe on Clara & Olivia

Author Lucy Ashe shares her journey from ballet to writing, and the inspiration behind her debut novel Clara & Olivia.

Lucy, Clara & Olivia was your debut novel. Was the idea for the book long in gestation? While Clara & Olivia is my first published novel, I did write two novels in the twenties that I never managed to get published. I think of these as my practice novels, my...

Earthquake at Antioch

Earthquake at Antioch

Antioch (modern-day Antakya) has suffered terribly from earthquakes throughout its history.
Katherine Pangonis

Earthquake at Antioch Six months following the devastating earthquake of February 6th  2023, the dust has finally settled across Southern Turkey and Northern Syria. Rescue efforts are over and the attention of the Turkish government and international aid community is...

Lady Caroline Lamb, by Antonia Fraser

Lady Caroline Lamb, by Antonia Fraser

A finely wrought portrait from Antonia Fraser.

History has not been kind to Caroline Lamb. The writer and lover of Lord Byron, who characterised him as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’, has generally been dismissed by his biographers, and those of her husband, William Lamb, the future Lord Melbourne, as an...

A Persian Journey

A Persian Journey

Dorothy Wellesley was a poet, gardener, traveller and heiress - a fascinating and complex woman whose marriage failed after an affair with Vita Sackville-West
Jane Wellesley

A Persian Journey ‘This Persian journey was the best in all my life’. I came across this note in a diary my grandmother Dorothy (‘Dottie’) Wellesley had kept during a trip to Persia in 1927. She added these words nearly twenty-five years later when she was writing her...

Deborah Swift on The Shadow Network

Deborah Swift on The Shadow Network

The USA Today bestselling novelist talks about her latest World War Two set novel.
Ruby Dalwood

Deborah, congratulations on The Shadow Network. What inspired you to write it? The idea of manipulating the public through ‘fake news’ has many resonances for today, and this is what led me to be interested in the subject for a novel. How the media is controlled, and...

Fiction Book of the Month: Lucy Ashe on Clara & Olivia

Lucy Ashe

The author discusses her novels, inspiration and favourite moments of history.
Lucy Ashe

Lucy Ashe, what prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in? I knew I wanted my novel to be set at a time of new beginnings for British Ballet, and the early 1930s was an important transitional time. Ninette de Valois founded the Vic-Wells...

Deborah Swift on The Shadow Network

Deborah Swift on The Silk Code

Amy Chandler

Deborah Swift on The Silk Code Deborah, congratulations on The Silk Code. What encouraged you to write about the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Second World War? Like most people, I’m fascinated by those who are prepared to risk death in order to further a...

Ivan Menchell on Bonnie & Clyde

Ivan Menchell on Bonnie & Clyde

The Emmy nominated writer talks with author Richard Foreman about his latest creation, currently playing at the West End.

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...

The Queen, by Matthew Dennison

The Queen, by Matthew Dennison

A real sense of the complex web and strains of life within the Royal Family.
Rupert Hague-Holmes

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...

Bonnie & Clyde Review: Criminally Good

Bonnie & Clyde Review: Criminally Good

The classic tale gets a musical reboot at the Garrick

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...