The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Colonialism: a Moral Reckoning contains a lot of history. If it does nothing else, I hope it will inform Britons, young and old, of the whole truth about our three-hundred-year career of imperial endeavour all over the world. For it tells not only of the tragic,...
Historical Heroes: Charles Dickens From pasting labels onto pots at the blacking factory, from taking supper with his family in the Marshalsea Prison, to the top of the Victorian literary tree, Charles Dickens’s story is a remarkable one. The blacking factory by...
David Cairns’ latest detective novel, The Case of the Wandering Corpse follows the investigative duo Errol Rait and Major Findo Gask in this Sherlock Holmes-esque mystery set in the late 1860s in Melbourne, Australia. The mystery begins with a distraught and fearful...
What inspired your latest novel The Case of the Wandering Corpse The murder that introduces Gask and Rait had its genesis in 1864, after Franz Muller - a German tailor - was publicly hanged for the murder of Thomas Briggs. This was the first murder on a British train....
For military historians the top of the academic greasy pole is the Chichele Chair of The History of War at Oxford, and so one would expect any work emanating from that source to be the definitive work of its subject. Iron and Blood by Professor Peter H. Wilson is...
Crime in Victorian London One of the settings for my new novel, The Jaggard Case, is Clerkenwell - the scene of the arrest of Oliver Twist for pickpocketing. Clerkenwell was famous not only for its jewellery and watchmaking industries, but also its criminality and...
Within the pages of my latest book, set in the gritty backdrop of 1860s Melbourne, The Case of the Wandering Corpse, a thrilling tale unfolds as my protagonists Findo Gask and Erroll Rait confront an elusive organization known as Die Broederskap (The Broederbond)....
It’s a safe bet to suppose that while you’ll know of The Four Feathers and its essential storyline – after all, it’s been adapted for film six times – you probably won’t be able to name its author. In fact you’re almost certainly more likely to know that the most...
JC Briggs brings the reader into the world of mid-nineteenth-century London very effectively indeed. The Jaggard Case is the tenth in Briggs’ series of crime novels featuring the writer as detective, which began with The Murder of Patience Brooke in 2014. The mystery...
The Buckingham History Festival, which takes place in the celebrated market town over the weekend of 15-17 September, is one that subscribers to Aspects of History will relish. There’s a particular emphasis this year on the Early Modern period – which is no surprise...
