Historical Musings #96: HWA Crown Awards 2026

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Welcome to this month’s post on all things historical fiction!

This month, I want to highlight the books nominated for this year’s HWA Crown Awards. The longlists were announced last Wednesday by the Historical Writers Association (HWA) and you can find all the details here. There are three separate awards – one for debut novels, one for non-fiction and the other (the Gold Crown) for authors who have been previously published. The shortlists will be announced in October and the winner in November. Although I don’t have any plans to try to read all of these books, I thought it would be interesting to look at what, if anything, I’ve read so far from each list and what else I might like to read.

Debut Crown Award

The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain
Finding Ida by Marya Burgess
Splendour by Elizabeth Jane Burnett
The Show Woman by Emma Cowing
The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehmann
A Mind Prone to Evil by PS Lynch
When Sleeping Women Wake by Emma Pei Yin
All That is Left is Life by Roberta Recchia translated by Antonella Lettieri
Soon Come by Shuba Shand-Baptiste
Blood Caste by Shylashri Shankar
Jamaica Road by Lisa Smith
The Visit by Neil Tully

Surprisingly, I haven’t read any of these! I’ve usually read at least one or two from the list. I’ve heard of The Show Woman and The Beheading Game but the others are all new to me.

Non-fiction Crown Award

Mad Tom’s Rising: The Revolutionary Mystic Sir William Courtenay and the Last Battle Fought on English Soil by Ian Breckon
Stay Alive by Ian Buruma
Deadwood by Peter Cozzens
Queer Georgians by Anthony Delaney
Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker by Lauren Johnson
The Zorg by Siddharth Kara
Trafalgar: Battle & Aftermath by Paul O’Keeffe
Wreckers: Disaster in the Age of Discovery by Simon Park
Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War by Jane Rogoyska
A Day in the Life of a Gladiator: Those Who Are About To Die by Harry Sidebottom
The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack: How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England by Alanna Skuse
A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars by Alwyn Turner

I haven’t read any of these either, although that’s less surprising as I read relatively little non-fiction. As I love reading about the Wars of the Roses, I should probably look for the Margaret Beaufort book, but some of the others also sound tempting, particularly Mad Tom’s Rising, Hotel Exile and The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack.

Gold Crown Award

The Bookbinder’s Secret by AD Bell
The Tarot Reader of Versailles by Anya Bergman
The Venetian Heretic by Christian Cameron
The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Nonesuch by Francis Spufford
A Far-flung Life by ML Stedman
The Last Witch by CJ Cooke
A Scrooge Mystery by Andreina Cordani
The Pretender by Jo Harkin
Lion Hearts by Dan Jones
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
The Winter Warriors by Olivier Norek translated by Nick Caistor

I’ve read two of these and enjoyed both, particularly A Far-flung Life which is one of my books of the year so far. I definitely want to read Nonesuch, although I still need to catch up on Spufford’s other recent books as well, and I already need to read The Pretender for my Walter Scott Prize Project. Of the others, I think the CJ Cooke and Anya Bergman appeal to me most.

~

What do you think of these longlists? Have you read any of these books or are there any you would like to try?

The Curse of the Saltmarsh Girl by Clare Marchant

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This is my second Clare Marchant book, following The Alchemist’s Secret which I read earlier this year. It’s also my favourite of the two – although I enjoyed both books, I found this one darker, more atmospheric and more gripping. Although I’m often critical of dual timeline novels (which this is), I thought that format worked quite well here as the modern day character has a well developed storyline of her own rather than just providing a frame for the historical thread.

The first chapter sets the tone for the rest of the book as Angel drives through a heavy sea fog on her way to stay with her brother on the North Norfolk coast. Convinced first that an animal of some kind is running along beside her car and then that the vague, murky figure of a human is actually inside the car with her, Angel begins to question why Dan has chosen to live in such an isolated, unsettling place. His home is a converted barn on the outskirts of Saltmarsh, a ruined village abandoned during an outbreak of plague in the 17th century and although Angel had wanted a quiet place to escape from her personal problems for a while, this isn’t quite what she’d expected.

In 1665, however, Saltmarsh is still a busy, thriving village. Margery has just arrived there in search of her mother who left their home in nearby Kelveton five weeks earlier to visit her other daughter who lives in Saltmarsh. She never returned, so Margery has decided to walk to the village herself to look for her – but she’s not prepared for what awaits her there. Her sister is dead and no one can tell her what has happened to her mother; in fact, the villagers are so hostile, Margery is sure they know more than they’re admitting. Lodging with Bridget and Anne, two healers who live just outside Saltmarsh, Margery is determined to get to the bottom of her mother’s disappearance, but when bubonic plague reaches the village, Margery is blamed for bringing the disease with her in the form of the mythical black dog, Black Shuck.

Black Shuck – who, depending on the legend, can be either a malicious demon or a protective creature – appears in both the historical and present day threads of the novel. Other pieces of Norfolk folklore are also woven in, such as the legend of the Lantern Men, marsh spirits associated with ghostly lights and the sound of whistling. I found the book genuinely creepy in places and although there are rational explanations for some of the things that happen, others aren’t fully explained, leaving a sense of the supernatural. There are also lots of vivid, evocative descriptions of the Norfolk coastal landscape with its treacherous marshes, all adding to the atmosphere.

Although Margery’s story was more exciting, it was interesting to see Angel uncovering the secrets of Saltmarsh. I liked the idea of symbols carved into the altar of the ruined church describing what happened in the village and Angel trying to interpret them – at first I thought it seemed a bit too convenient that anyone would do that, but then I remembered that of course there are real cases of what’s known as ‘historical graffiti’ recording important events. There are several other things tying the two narratives together as well. First, there’s a mother/daughter theme in each one. Angel, who was abandoned as a baby and adopted by two loving parents, has been contacted by a woman claiming to be her sister; Angel now has to decide whether to meet her (and potentially get to know her biological mother) but is struggling with the decision. Meanwhile, Margery, who has lost her own mother, finds that her new friends, Bridget and Anne, have become as close to her as family. There’s also a hint of romance for both Angel and Margery, but I liked the way it was only briefly touched upon in both cases, rather than becoming a big part of the plot.

I’ll look forward to Clare Marchant’s next book and will try to investigate some of her earlier ones as well.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Reviewed for RIPXXI hosted by @perilreaders

The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain

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Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is one of my favourite books, so I was intrigued when I saw that it was the inspiration for Rose Tremain’s new novel, The Housekeeper. I’ve had mixed experiences with Tremain’s books in the past, but I knew I would have to try this one.

The Housekeeper is set in the 1930s at Manderville Hall, a large country house in Cornwall. Lilianne Maria Danowski has been housekeeper there for several years, having left Poland with her father as a young girl. Danni, as she is known – or sometimes Mrs D – is happy with her job and fond of her employer, Lord Grenville-Whithers, an elderly widower. However, the old man is starting to think about the future and as he has no heir of his own, he invites his niece Adelaide to come and stay, with the intention of leaving the house to her. Adelaide is an unpleasant, overbearing woman and Danni knows she will have to tread carefully around her, particularly as she’s currently in a relationship that could cost her her job if discovered…

Danni’s lover is the author Daphne du Maurier, who has come to research her new novel and has been given permission to use Lord Grenville-Whithers’ boathouse to do her writing. The two women are immediately drawn to each other; for Danni it’s a passionate love affair and she assumes Daphne feels the same, but when Daphne’s new novel is published, Danni is left feeling hurt and betrayed by what she reads.

Lilianne Maria Danowski was not a real person; she’s a fictional character invented by Rose Tremain, but if you’ve read Rebecca you’ll be able to see the parallels with Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper at Manderley, referred to by Rebecca as Danny. Tremain imagines that Danowski was du Maurier’s inspiration for Mrs Danvers and explores how she may have felt at seeing an unflattering portrayal of herself in a book. If you haven’t read Rebecca you’re probably wondering if you need to do so before reading The Housekeeper. My answer would be no, it’s not essential, but it would definitely be a good idea as then you would be able to spot all the little echoes of Rebecca that Tremain weaves into the story.

The Housekeeper is a beautifully written novel, but I did have a few problems with it. I felt that Danni and Daphne’s relationship began very suddenly with no real build and I just didn’t feel very convinced by it. I know quite a lot about Daphne du Maurier’s history and background, having read her autobiography Myself When Young, as well as Jane Dunn’s biography Daphne du Maurier and Her Sisters, and the impression I got from those books is that she was a complex person – shy, private and reclusive, which could make her come across as distant or aloof, but also loyal and affectionate towards her close friends. There’s not much of that complexity in Tremain’s novel; her Daphne is cold, manipulative and selfish, caring more about her reputation than Danni’s feelings.

Although I didn’t care for the portrayal of Daphne, I did like Danni. I loved the little glimpses we get of her childhood growing up as a Jewish girl in Radom, Poland, and I would have liked more of that. I also enjoyed the sections of the book set after Danni’s relationship with Daphne ends and she sets up her own business as a seamstress; there’s an interesting little subplot here involving a girl for whom Danni is asked to make a wedding dress, and another featuring two other former servants from Manderville Hall.

Apparently The Housekeeper, which began as a short story several years ago, is already being adapted for film and will star Caitriona Balfe and Emma Laird as Danni and Daphne, Anthony Hopkins as Lord Grenville-Whithers and Helena Bonham Carter as Adelaide.

Thanks to Chatto & Windus for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

By Horror Haunted by Celia Fremlin

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This month Rebecca of Bookish Beck is hosting Short Story September. There are lots of short story collections I would like to read but I knew I would probably only have time for one this month, so I chose one that I would be almost guaranteed to enjoy. I loved Celia Fremlin’s 1970 short story collection Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark, which I read a few years ago, and By Horror Haunted, originally published in 1974, sounded very similar.

The title is slightly misleading, I think, as most of the stories can only very loosely be described as horror. Some are quite eerie and unsettling, one or two include ghosts, but most are concerned with the ‘horrors’ of everyday life. One story deals with a fear of flying, for example, and another features a man struggling to come to terms with blindness – both of which Fremlin describes convincingly and realistically. There are fifteen stories in the book and most are short enough to read in just a few minutes; although I would have liked some of them to have been developed further, they are all satisfying and each one has a clever twist at the end – my favourite kind of short story!

Of all the stories, the only one that did really scare me was The Savage Heart, in which a zoologist decides to keep a lion cub as a pet and raise it along with his little girl, Rosalie. This causes a sensation, with newspaper reporters descending on the house to take photos of Rosalie and Leo playing together. As the lion grows bigger and stronger, however, Rosalie starts to feel more and more uneasy around him. I read this story with a growing sense of dread, as I’m sure you can imagine!

The first story, Her Number on It, was another that stood out. A middle-aged woman finds that she can’t stop stealing dresses from a London department store, much to her husband’s embarrassment, as he’s the one who has to keep speaking to the manager and promising she won’t do it again. But what he doesn’t know is that something even stranger is happening to his wife – she has discovered a tube station that acts as a portal to a different time. I also enjoyed The Intruder, in which a young woman listens to noises upstairs in the night, convinced that there’s a burglar in the house. This is one of those stories with such a surprising twist it makes you want to go straight back to the beginning to read it again!

Fremlin writes from a variety of different perspectives, ranging from a ninety-year-old woman who, in Ephemerida, compares herself to the mayfly which lives for just one day, to the teenage girl in Barry Findlater, who tries to keep her mother happy by inventing a boyfriend – with disastrous results. Most of the stories, though, deal with people struggling with marital tensions or the challenges of parenthood. I loved The Sunday Outing, where a husband decides to pretend he was in a train accident to give himself some time away from his wife, and An Unsuspected Talent, which follows a wife who, frustrated with her husband’s lack of ambition, takes matters into her own hands – literally.

If I had to pick a favourite story it would definitely be Don’t Tell Cissie. Cissie is one of those people for whom if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. If anyone is likely to get lost and miss the bus, to fall in a pond and catch pneumonia, or drop a kettle full of boiling water and scald herself, it’s Cissie. As her friend, Lois, observes:

She was like that at school, and now, when we’re all coming up towards retirement, she’s like it still. You know the kind of person I mean? Friendly, goodhearted, and desperately anxious to be in on everything, and yet with this mysterious knack of ruining things – of bringing every project grinding to a halt, simply by being there.

So when Lois and another friend, Rosemary, decide to visit Rosemary’s new weekend cottage in the marshes, which is said to be haunted, it seems sensible to leave Cissie behind. Cissie, of course, has other ideas and isn’t about to miss out on the fun! I really enjoyed this one. It has the sort of humour I loved in Fremlin’s Uncle Paul and the ending is perfect.

Although I thought Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark was slightly stronger overall, this is another great collection and reminded me how much I love Celia Fremlin’s writing. I’ve only read two of her longer novels so far (Uncle Paul and The Long Shadow) so I still have a lot to look forward to!

The Newer World by Sebastian Barry

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Sebastian Barry’s latest novel, The Newer World, is loosely connected to two of his earlier books, Days Without End and A Thousand Moons. If you’ve read those books you’ll remember the characters of John Cole, Thomas McNulty and Winona and all three appear again in this book. However, it’s not necessary to have read them first as this book works as a standalone and focuses on Tennyson Bouguereau, who was a secondary character in A Thousand Moons.

Tennyson and his twin sister Rosalee are born into slavery in 1840s Tennessee and later freed – although as Tennyson observes, “freed is not the same as free” and a lot is left to be desired in terms of equality and opportunities for people who were formerly enslaved. After the Civil War, Tennyson and Rosalee find themselves living on Lige Magan’s farm, the same place Irish soldier Thomas McNulty, his partner John and their adopted Lakota daughter, Winona, have ended up. The farm won’t be a safe haven for long, though, and eventually Tennyson is forced to flee, leaving Rosalee and their friends behind. Assisted by a kind-hearted lawyer, Tennyson makes his way to Nashville, where he attends a college and finds that he has a talent for singing. Joining a touring choir, he unexpectedly has the chance to visit England and on his return finds that he’s faced with making a decision that could change his life forever.

The novel is narrated by Tennyson himself, a brave decision by Sebastian Barry. His publishers had apparently advised against it due to cultural appropriation concerns, which is obviously a controversial topic, but I thought Tennyson’s narrative voice felt authentic and the themes of racism, prejudice and slavery were handled sensitively and sympathetically. Through Tennyson’s eyes, we see how even after the abolition of slavery he still has to deal with restrictions on his everyday life, such as when he is threatened with a fine for simply ‘walking without purpose’.

During his time at college in Nashville, Tennyson reads the Odyssey and afterwards begins to draw parallels between his own life and the journey of Odysseus who, like himself, is far from home. But Tennyson, however, has lost so much and so many of the people he loved that he’s not sure where home really is anymore: “I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things, my days in the world, even the eyes I had seen them with, were gone forever.”

Sebastian Barry’s books are always beautifully written and this one is no exception, although I’ve found that in general I seem to prefer his books set in Ireland rather than this sequence set in America. I suspect he may be returning to this world for a fourth novel, though, as several characters have decided to head for Alaska to start a new life. There would also be the option of telling Rosalee’s story, left behind on the farm during Tennyson’s long absence. Whatever he chooses to write next, I’ll be looking out for it.

Thanks to Faber and Faber Ltd for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Midnight Guests by Alex Hay

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It’s 1926 and London’s newest, grandest hotel is opening its doors for the first time. Owner Diana Gold is getting ready to welcome her first guests, who include some of the richest and most powerful people in the world – millionaires, bankers, royalty, film stars, politicians and gamblers. But she’s also expecting two guests who are not so welcome – two people who took her under their wing as a young woman and led her into a life of crime. Now Diana has found herself in their debt and they’re due to arrive at midnight to take what they are owed.

From that fateful opening night, we jump forward one hundred years to 2026 and meet Joe, an out-of-work historian who is staying at that same hotel, the Hotel Artemis, on its final night before it closes down. Joe’s grandmother, a former journalist, has recently died, leaving behind her uncompleted research into the mystery of two unidentified dead bodies found in the vaults of the hotel in 1929. Seeing a chance to earn some money, Joe has decided to continue his grandmother’s research and write about a book about it – but tonight is his final opportunity to investigate inside the hotel itself before it closes its doors again forever.

The novel is written from the perspectives of both Diana in 1926 and Joe in 2026, but there are also some chapters written from another character’s point of view – Cleo van der Meer, a young American woman who is one of the first guests at the Hotel Artemis. We don’t know at first how Cleo fits into the story, but everything becomes clear eventually! Although the plot is quite complex, it moves along at a fast pace and there are some clever twists, including a great one halfway through which I hadn’t seen coming at all. Hotels are always interesting settings, I think, and although the Artemis doesn’t really exist, I loved Alex Hay’s descriptions of it – he really captures the feel of what it may have been like to stay in a luxury hotel in the 1920s.

Like Hay’s previous two novels, The Housekeepers and The Queen of Fives, The Midnight Guests is unusual in that it focuses on the lives of criminals – people we would usually see as villains. Through the stories of Diana, her assistant Silas, and several of the other characters we see how easily people can drift into a life of crime and how difficult it can be for them to get out of it again. This is not a book to be taken too seriously, though, and is clearly intended to be fun and entertaining. It does all become quite far-fetched, particularly towards the end – with such a high body count that the remains found in the vault could be almost anyone’s! – but if you’ve read Hay’s other work you’ll have known what sort of book to expect anyway.

I don’t want to say too much more about this book as I don’t want to risk spoiling a story that relies so much on suspense and surprises. I enjoyed it and will be looking out for his next one.

Thanks to Headline for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Agatha Christie Cure by Cathy Rentzenbrink

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If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you’ll have noticed that I read a lot of Agatha Christie books! In fact, I’ve now read most of her work and only have a few more novels and some short story collections left to read. It’s taken me many years to get this far, though, and I’ve been reading the books in a very haphazard way, picking them up in no particular order as I come across them or to fit the monthly themes for the Read Christie challenge. In The Agatha Christie Cure, Cathy Rentzenbrink describes her own journey through Christie’s work, which is much more structured than mine!

Rentzenbrink’s project begins at Christmas. She’s feeling tired and miserable – she and her husband, Erwyn, are considering separating; their son Matt is unhappy at school; and because of the Christmas holidays, Cathy has none of her usual work activities to keep herself occupied. Reading all of Agatha Christie’s books in the order they were published seems like the perfect distraction – a way to escape from real life for a while and also a fascinating opportunity to watch the 20th century unfold through Christie’s eyes. Deciding to start immediately, she gets into a warm bath, picks up The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and begins.

The Agatha Christie Cure incorporates a lot. There are discussions of Christie’s novels (usually quite brief but sometimes a whole chapter devoted to one book); other sections take the form of a memoir, with Rentzenbrink talking about her personal life, her family and her relationship with Christie; and we also learn a lot about Christie herself, drawing on her own autobiography, with a focus on her sudden disappearance for several days in December 1926. There’s a good balance between these three different elements of the book, with some crossover between them, for example when Cathy looks for parallels between her own life and Christie’s. I particularly enjoyed Rentzenbrink’s interactions with her son, Matt, discussing Christie’s books with him and sometimes reading or listening to them together. Despite his problems at school, Matt is an intelligent, observant boy and often picks up on details in the books that his mother has missed.

You may be wondering about spoilers. Unfortunately, I thought they were handled quite inconsistently throughout the book. In the chapter on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for example, Rentzenbrink provides a spoiler warning before going on to discuss the solution to the mystery, but later in the book she casually names the culprit from Roger Ackroyd again without repeating the spoiler warning. Because I’ve already read so much of Christie’s work, I mostly felt safe (although I skipped over the sections on the few books I still haven’t read, such as Elephants Can Remember and Curtain) but this could be more of a problem for readers who’ve read less Christie than I have.

I’ve often wished that I had tried to read Christie’s novels in order from the beginning as it sounds like such an interesting, rewarding approach to an author’s work. Not only can you watch the author grow and develop with each book, but when their work spans several decades, as Christie’s does, you can also look out for hints of social and cultural change and technological advancement. Of course, there can also be some disadvantages to reading in order – as Rentzenbrink discovers, most of Christie’s better books were written earlier in her career and the later ones tend to be weaker. Maybe my random approach is better after all, as it provides more variety and keeps things fresh.

I found The Agatha Christie Cure very enjoyable, but if you’re just beginning your own Christie journey (or haven’t started yet) then it would probably be wise to wait until you’ve read more of her books. Definitely read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd first!

Thanks to Canongate Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.