The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Goodnight Vienna, Jane Thynne Interview. Jane, many congratulations on Midnight in Vienna. What is it about the city that made you want to set much of the book there? It’s impossible to think about twentieth century art, philosophy, psychology, or politics and not to...
Books of 2023 from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of The Dardanelles ConspiracyIt’s been a great year for fiction and non-fiction, but these books are my first amongst equals. Every Spy a Traitor by Alex Gerlis follows Agent Archie, a Russian mole in MI6 across...
Old Delhi to New: A Murderous History of India’s Capital City Go to Delhi these days and you’ll be hit by a slew of jokes about the city’s choking smog. Gallows humour, perhaps, but you can sense a certain grim determination by Delhiites to persevere in the face of...
Justin, A Leap in the Dark is a historical novel set in the criminal underworld of Edinburgh. Why did you want to write it? I grew up in Scotland and spent part of my youth in Edinburgh, which had and still has a strong hold on my imagination. A Leap In the Dark is...
Founded by Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple was a cult with ideological radical political, religious and racial aims. In an attempt to create a socialist utopia, Jones established a remote agricultural project settlement in Guyana, known as Jonestown. Here, under Jones’...
In 1879 a group of eleven young people descended on the quiet Russian spa town of Lipetsk, over 700 miles south of St Petersburg. The ten men and one woman stood out from the geriatric invalids who comprised the resort’s usual visitors, thanks to their youth, physical...
Annie Dawid on Paradise Undone Annie, why did you want to write about Jonestown? In the 1980s, two friends disappeared into a cult. Later, I met others whose friends also vanished, some dying in their chosen communities, like Heaven’s Gate. Our friends who joined...
Jonestown: Paradise Undone “The first body I saw was off to the side, alone. Five more steps and I saw another and another and another; hundreds of bodies. The Newsweek reporter was walking around saying, “I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it.” Another guy said,...
Gytha Godwinson: a Tale of Terror, Trial and Triumph Women in the High Middle Ages often seem to be a faceless, nameless mass. Life was not precious and survival precarious: they were the silent and hard labouring ‘other half’ in a world that was distinctly male and...
I’ve written extensively on the Second World War in Europe. My eleven books may be works of fiction but the plots are all based around real events that unfolded during the war. That history and the locations I use are all carefully researched. I scrupulously avoid...
