The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
This is the story of the Jewish children who fled to America and France on the eve of WW2, thus avoiding incarceration or death in the Holocaust. Based around oral and written testimonies, Who Will Rescue Us? traces the efforts of networks of relief workers and aid...
Historical Heroes: Chiune Sugihara Chiune Sugihara is the little-known Japanese World War 2 hero who saved thousands of refugees with his pen. Through his quiet defiance, he issued what became known as ‘Visas for Life’, helping an estimated 6,000 Jewish refugees...
In WW2 Europe, escape routes for Jewish refugees were vanishing one by one. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Kaunas in Lithuania became a haven for Jewish families fleeing the brutality of the Nazis. But that safety was short-lived. As the numbers needing to flee...
The Slipperiness of History I was really interested to read recently that the coded letters of Mary Queen of Scots have been deciphered by modern computer scientists and decoders. Undoubtedly this will give us hitherto unknown insights into what we know about her and...
Deborah, congratulations on The Shadow Network. What inspired you to write it? The idea of manipulating the public through ‘fake news’ has many resonances for today, and this is what led me to be interested in the subject for a novel. How the media is controlled, and...
Deborah Swift on The Silk Code Deborah, congratulations on The Silk Code. What encouraged you to write about the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Second World War? Like most people, I’m fascinated by those who are prepared to risk death in order to further a...
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,...
Deborah, congratulations on The Fortune Keeper. What drew you to Renaissance Italy? I’ve always been fascinated by Renaissance art and science and its effect on cultural life. In these novels I explore the artist Bernini and the legacy of Galileo Galilei as well as...
As soon as I picked up this book I knew it was a brilliant idea, and wondered why no-one had thought to do it before. The answer lies in the book itself, which is that the amount of research taken is enormous. Writing as an amateur, and not a historian, it is a...
Deborah Swift, what is it about Samuel Pepys that makes for such an entertaining subject, even today? I think as a writer I just appreciate the fact he took the time to document in such detail the age in which he lived. This has made him a source for historians and...
