The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
The immediate hook is the film of the Robert Harris novel, Munich: The Edge of War – and its obvious agenda to rescue Chamberlain for history. You will remember, especially if you have seen the film - which has been available on Netflix from last weekend - that...
Nick Sweet’s Murder in Seville is an intriguing and exciting noir crime novel that draws the reader in. Seville, 1979 (only four years after Franco’s death): Inspector Luis Velasquez is called onto the scene of what seems a brutal homicide: a vet is found dead in his...
Mining for History Researching British history can be both a pleasure and a trial. You might well start with the relevant secondary works, but in my experience that only serves to whet the appetite. It’s when you trawl through the minutiae of contemporary written...
Bosnia and Herzegovina was a hotly disputed territory in 1914. It had been annexed by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1910 from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, but was also claimed by neighbouring Serbia and had a growing nationalist movement that wanted it to be part...
Alan Bardos, what prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in? My first book The Assassins is set just before the First World War and is about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I chose that period because the events around the...
Peter Tonkin, you clearly have a passion for the Elizabethan era, when did this interest start? I have always been fascinated by history. One of my earlier memories (aged 6?) is sitting in my bedroom in Holland (as my father was posted to Germany at the time and we...
One of the most common tropes of the First World War is the poster of a finger-pointing Lord Kitchener telling the men of Britain “your country needs you”. Thousands responded, sometimes signing up with their friends or colleagues. Later, in 1916, conscription was...
It’s the 6th Century and the Roman Empire is expanding and looking to conquer more. Based on Procopius of Caesarea's account of the first known case of industrial espionage, Evans' The Charioteer has crafted an enthralling and witty novel that sustains the reader’s...
The bestselling novelist Richard Foreman, who usually writes about ancient Rome and the medieval period, brings the man and legend of Dick Turpin to life in the first book of a new, notable series, Turpin's Assassin. The book opens with an exciting highway robbery....
What did the Romans ever do for us? As I write this, we are witnessing the chaotic withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan. History will judge whether this 20 year occupation served a purpose for either side. Did the suppression of the Taliban safeguard the West...
