The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Rory Clements, the crash which killed the Duke of Kent in 1942 was a tragic event, with only one survivor, how did you come across it and why did you write the story? I have known about the crash for many years, but I was aware that most people had no idea that the...
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...
At 23:15 hours on 5 June 1944, a broadcast was made from the BBC in London. It was the second part of the poem Chanson d’Automne - “Blessent mon coeur, d’une langueur, monotone” (“wound my heart with a monotonous languor”). Upon hearing this, Resistance leaders in...
As the coronation of Charles III approaches, Action This Day ploughs us back into a time of risk, uncertainty and unthinkable steaks. The era of the Second World War might’ve been rife with struggle, but there was more than just that; individual stories, people,...
Aspects of History - Roger Moorhouse on the invasion of Poland in 1939 | RSS.com Roger Moorhouse on the invasion of Poland in 1939 - Part Two | RSS.com
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 Island of Extraordinary Captives Marjan Rawicz surveyed the crowd gathered on the terraced lawn in front of his grand piano. Rawicz was used to giving well-attended performances at illustrious venues: during the past few years the forty-two-year-old musician had...
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...
What inspired you to write the Shilling Grange Children’s Home series set in the aftermath and displacement of the Second World War? For me, writing a book is like a glorious throwing together of things that interest you – and hopefully creating a perfect storm...
