The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Pirate Irwin, what first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? Summer holidays when I was a nipper in France sparked a fascination with the moral conundrum faced by the people with a war hero Petain having agreed to collaborate with the Nazis to preserve...
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Music, history and clowning around. What more could your ask for on a winter's night? Southwark Playhouse is currently hosting a production of Joan Littlewood's Oh What A Lovely War. The play is a romp through the First World War, full of satire and old songs - told...
Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Japan’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor has gone down in history as a short-term victory with catastrophic long-term consequences. The Japanese leadership, already bogged down in an unwinnable war in China, were aware that they were...
Alistair, congratulations on your third book, Warrior. Since we last spoke, our heroes, Lucius Faenis Felix and Cai Martis, have travelled to Hispania and Felix’s homeland from the Northern Britannia of Hunt. What sort of man is Felix? Well firstly, thanks for having...
There was a point, early on in Napoleon, when Marie Antoinette is taken out to be executed in front of the mob, that I realised I should relax, not quibble over inaccuracies, and simply enjoy the show. The camera cuts to a man in the crowd, and that man is Napoleon...
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...
William, your new book The Romantic is drawn on a very broad historical and geographical canvas. How did you go about researching it? Did the pandemic make some research difficult? One of the reasons I set the book in the nineteenth century is that I have this great,...
The Winter Garden is a historical fiction time-slip novel, exploring the Gunpowder Plot as it has never been done before. Unravelling the myths, legends and stories we know about the events of 1605, Nicola Cornick brings to life the people behind our modern-day...
What prompted you to write about Drabble & Harris, and the Inter-War period? The idea for my first novel, Rule Britannia, was inspired by two things – first I remember reading about Oliver Cromwell’s head, and how it had been in private hands for hundreds of...
