Edward James
The Gaol: The Story of Newgate, London’s Most Notorious Prison
Forget Alcatraz, the Bastille, or the Black Hole of Calcutta: the most notorious prison in history was surely Newgate. For…
A Voyage Long and Strange
This is a travelogue rather than a history book, written by a journalist, not an historian. The Voyage Long and…
The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English
This is not a history of the English language, despite the subtitle. There is little about grammar and syntax and…
Metrostop Paris: History from the City’s Heart
This is basically a literary walk around Paris, except that since it ranges over the whole metropolis the imaginary journey…
The Slave Ship, A Human History
‘One of the recurrent sounds of a slave ship was song. The sailors sometimes played instruments and sang, but more…
Charge! The Interesting Bits of Military History
Charge! is a miscellany of curious snippets of military history culled from Ancient Egypt to WWII. Most of the entries…
The Right Hand of the Sun
Editors' choice
What is the most dramatic and extraordinary adventure ever recorded? My vote must go to Cortes’s conquest of Mexico in…
The State Counsellor
I am a Boris Akunin fan, and the latest in his Erast Fandorin series does not disappoint. Fandorin is a…
Sanctuary
The Knights Templar again, with another secret they have guarded across the centuries: the elixir of life, no less. However,…
The Muscovy Chain
Can the modern genre of the detective story be transposed to cultural settings where there is no police force, no…
About our Reviews
Over the last 15 years The Historical Novels Review (the society’s print magazine for our members) has published reviews of some 12,000 historical fiction books. We plan to upload them all and make them searchable here.
