The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Ronald Hutton’s Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe examines four goddess-like figures from the medieval period to the present day: Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Lady of the Night, and the Cailleach. Packed with detail and insight – Hutton...
Ronald, you wrote Queens of the Wild during 2020, when Covid struck the land, and we were all confined to our homes. Did this experience bring any historical examples to mind when writing the book – a time when plagues were a more frequent occurrence? Covid was...
Those who have experienced disbelief in the politics of the United States over the past six years will find Hoax a fascinating read. The current acceptance of conspiracy theories – the ‘stolen’ election and a government controlled by paedophiles, to name but two – may...
Victor Stater, in your introduction you describe the Popish Plot as ‘preposterous’. Are we talking QAnon levels, or a more sane conspiracy theory such as the assassination of JFK? I’d say there are elements of both—the idea that Charles II might be assassinated in...
The Elizabethan Mind is a book I’ve awaited with excitement. Some years back, I was fortunate to hear Helen Hackett present her work on what would become this book at a symposium held in honour of my supervisor and friend, Alison Thorne. To my delight, the text not...
Readers of Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army (NMA) will be familiar with the first edition of this book, The New Model Army: Agent of Revolution, published some 30 years ago. It earned the tag ‘definitive’ at the time and has remained a much valued reference ever...
By the close of 1943, the tides of the global war at sea had turned significantly in favour of the Allies. In the North Atlantic Doenitz’s wolf-packs were increasingly pulling back, relieving the pressure on Allied convoy lines. In the Mediterranean most of the inland...
In the 1570s Thomas Whythorne, a musician and composer, wrote an account of his life. It’s an extraordinary document, not least since the term and concept of ‘autobiography’ didn’t yet exist. Whythorne charts his changing mental states through the different phases and...
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...
Margaret Willes, what inspired you to write about this subject, a book not about the cathedral, but about its surrounding area? My first memory of St Paul's Churchyard was emerging from the Underground into an area of devastation. It was probably in 1953, when my...
