The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Members Behaving Badly by Debbie Kilroy is an alternative history of the nation as seen through the stories of fifty-two rogue MPs who served in the House of Commons between 1603 and 1945. It’s an interesting framework and a clever idea. Research suggests that trust...
‘Iconic’ is a rather overused and clichéd word these days. It’s probably quite helpful, then, to unpack exactly what we mean when we use this term for the architecture of the past or present – or rather, what we ought to mean. Many new buildings in Britain’s towns and...
At various times during my Rebellion trilogy, castles play an important role in the narrative, not least the one built in the south east corner of York which we know today as St Clifford’s Tower. The castle would become a significant factor in the spread of Norman...
Hello Debbie. Members of Parliament behaving badly is a particularly fruitful topic these days! What was it that led you to write about these historical rogues? I was researching an academic paper looking at MPs in James I’s first English parliament, to see if you...
When studying Anglo-Saxon history at university, it often felt to me that (with apologies to East Anglia), Mercia was left holding the thin end of the wedge in terms of the big three kingdoms of the Heptarchy. With Northumbria to the north and Wessex to the south, it...
Welcome back, Giles – we’re exactly two years on from the release of The Stalin Affair, and that question of the nature of diplomacy between allies seems ever more relevant in recent weeks and months in 2026. The ‘impossible alliance’ you discuss between Franklin D....
Lincolnshire often seems to be a forgotten county even though it is the second largest in England. It has no motorways, a sketchy rail network post-Beeching and is stereotyped as a place of flat agricultural land and cheap seaside holiday resorts. That is to ignore...
In 1783 (or in some accounts 1793), three men were allegedly playing cards in the Chequers Inn, Holbeach, and talking about a friend who had recently died and who used to make up a foursome with them. They hatched a plan that must have seemed like a bloody good one...
Let me begin, Rory, by offering my congratulations on the publication of Offa: King of the Mercians. A truly magnificent piece of work. The jacket notes refer to this book as a ‘breathtaking piece of historical investigation’ (with which I cannot argue); how would you...
